


i know i've kissed you before, but i didn't do it right

by tessathompsonsbitch



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Repression, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Thinkfast, no this whole fic isn't me projecting onto both tommy and david if it was no it wasn't :), tommy shepherd is a massive himbo sorry i don't make the rules, tw alcohol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 02:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20752952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessathompsonsbitch/pseuds/tessathompsonsbitch
Summary: can i try again?***David has feelings for Tommy. Tommy doesn't like feelings at all. They're both a bit of a mess.





	i know i've kissed you before, but i didn't do it right

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from Pink in the Night by Mitski but if you're gay you already knew that!!
> 
> speaking of gay music, i made a (very short) playlist to pair with this fic!! enjoy! :) https://open.spotify.com/user/ardonney/playlist/35OkgK77wuuDI1tTBGObdx?si=uku50GgZS8Cnf4ToGaERQw
> 
> also, continuity-wise, this is two years after the end of Young Avengers Vol. 2

“Please,” Billy said around the bite of pancake he’d just shoved into his mouth. “Please just talk to him. He’ll listen to you.”

David laughed so suddenly he choked on his coffee.

“Are you serious right now? What makes you think Tommy listens to me?”

Billy and Teddy shared one of those looks. The kind that contained entire conversations the rest of the world would never understand. The kind that made David want to lunge across the table in this stupid diner and shove their stupid breakfasts into their stupid faces. _We get it, _David thought, _you’re soulmates, you complete each other, you know each other like the back of your hand._

Teddy failed to suppress a smile. “It doesn’t matter why. But he will.”

“I can’t see why you want him living with you so bad anyway.”

“Oh, come on,” Billy said. “You know Tommy. You know how much trouble he’ll get into if he doesn’t have someone to look after him. Besides, it would be good for him to have, you know, an actual home. He’s been on the move for too long.”

Frustration rose in David’s chest. He was offended on Tommy’s behalf. Sure, Tommy liked to have a good time, and yeah, he went too far sometimes, but he wasn’t a child. David definitely understood how these two could’ve driven someone like Tommy insane.

“If he doesn’t want to settle down, he doesn’t want to settle down. You can’t change that, and neither can I,” David said.

“Actually, I think—” Billy started, but Teddy elbowed him in the side before he could finish. “Um, I mean. You could try at least.”

“Look, it’s really sweet and all that you’re trying to take care of your brother, but I’m not your guy. Maybe you should call Kate.”

“We did,” Teddy said. “He accused her of going soft and told her to…well, he wasn’t nice about it.”

David sighed. Now he understood why they had turned to him.

“I see. So I’m the last resort.”

“Exactly.”

David pushed his leftover scrambled eggs around on his plate. The truth was, he hadn’t seen Tommy in a long time. For a while after the whole Patri-not debacle, they had spent almost all their time together. Faster than David thought possible, Tommy had become his best friend. And then one day they just…stopped. Tommy went back to bouncing around the globe. They got take-out together once every few months when he swung through New York. It had been almost a year since David had spoken to Tommy at all.

Now he didn’t even know what he would say.

“You know, we weren’t going to bring this up—”

“Billy…” Teddy interrupted, shaking his head.

“Look at him,” Billy said. “He’s not gonna do it. It’s time to break out the big gun.”

Teddy sighed. “Fine.”

Billy turned again to David.

“As I was saying. You still kind of owe us one. From the whole ‘kissing Teddy even though you knew we were in a very long-term, very committed relationship’ thing.”

David dropped his fork and stared down at the table.

“I’ve said I’m sorry about that like a million times. When are you going to let it go?”

Billy smirked. “I’ll let it go as soon as you make it up to me by convincing Tommy to move in with us.”

“I’m telling you, he won’t listen to me.”

“Just try,” Billy said. “Just try to talk some sense into my idiot brother, and I promise I’ll never bring up the fact that you kissed my fiancé ever again.”

“Jesus, Billy,” David said, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. You had to love Billy. You had to. He cared about people so much. Tommy, Teddy—everyone. He had such a big heart, you had to forgive his stubbornness. “All right. I’ll talk to Tommy. I’m not making any promises, and, for the record, I think he would be miserable living with you guys, but I’ll do my best.”

“See! I told you that would work!”

“Yeah, yeah, you told me,” Teddy said. “Thanks, David.”

“Anything to help Tommy, right?” David said. While Billy and Teddy shared another infuriating look, David went back to pushing his food around his plate.

_Tommy, _David thought. _Tommy Shepherd._

_I guess I’d better think of something to say._

***

Tommy couldn’t stop fidgeting as he sat on the bench in Central Park.

_Why am I early? _he thought. _I’m never early._

But, of course, David was always right on time. After nearly a year of not speaking to each other, Tommy thought maybe he should give the impression he had grown up a bit. Whether or not he actually had was beside the point.

So now here he was, in the park, at 12:50 PM because David had asked to meet here at 1 “to talk about something important.”

First of all, what did David Alleyne have to talk to him about that was so important it had to break Tommy’s carefully maintained streak of avoiding him? Wait, no, actually, back it up. _First _of all, how did David find out he was back in New York? Tommy had been sure to steer clear of all their usual spots (including his favorite take-out place and the least annoying coffee shop in Manhattan, but whatever) because, again, the whole avoiding thing.

Tommy was avoiding David for reasons. Not important ones. They definitely had nothing to do with the fact that David had kissed him (on accident) and then become someone Tommy wanted to spend all his time with (maybe also on accident).

“What the hell?!” Tommy heard, and he glanced all around himself in a panic. Sometimes when he got too anxious and wasn’t paying attention, things in his vicinity started mysteriously exploding. Occasionally it was funny, like the time he blew a cop’s hat clean off their head, but more often than not, it was a streetlight or a window or something else that tended to put people in danger. Tommy didn’t like being a menace, even if he was pretty good at it.

This time, though, there were no explosions. Just David, strolling up with two coffees in his hands and genuine shock on his face.

“Did I say meet at 12? Am I late?” David said.

“Actually…” Tommy glanced at his phone. “You’re two minutes early. Classic David. Still not as early as me, though.”

“I would’ve been earlier if your large triple-shot, triple chocolate frappuccino didn’t take so damn long to make.”

“Aw, you shouldn’t have,” Tommy said sarcastically, trying to mask how flattered he was that David remembered his order. He took the coffee as David sat down beside him on the bench.

Just like that, they were back in their usual groove. Not even an awkward handshake. Tommy would’ve been relieved if he wasn’t so _fucking frustrated _at how _fucking easy_ it was to talk to David.

“What brings you to New York?” David asked.

“Oh, you know. The usual.”

“Billy wouldn’t stop bugging you until you agreed to visit?”

Tommy laughed. “Exactly.”

“So, um…” David hesitated. _Here it comes_, Tommy thought. “I hear you might be moving in with them. Billy and Teddy.”

Tommy blinked. That wasn’t what he was expecting.

“No, I’m not,” he said immediately. “They keep on asking me, and they even got Kate to…” Tommy stopped. Oh. _Oh. _He hadn’t thought about it until now, but this meeting spot was dangerously close to Billy and Teddy’s apartment. “Hang on a second. Is that what this is about? Did those idiots send you to do their dirty work, too?”

“I—uh—”

Disappointment hollowed out Tommy’s chest.

“Oh, cool. So you didn’t want to hang out because we’re bros and you missed me or something. You’re just trying to help my brother put me on lockdown so I don’t cause any trouble.”

Tommy felt like the temperature had risen 20 degrees in the past second. He jumped up from the bench, his instincts begging him to run as far and as fast as he could.

“Tommy, no,” David said. His calm, collected tone only made Tommy angrier.

“I’m not a little kid, ok? I know I’m not as smart as you, and I don’t have my whole life figured out like Billy and Teddy, but—”

Now David stood, too.

“I don’t think you’re a little kid.”

“Then why are you—”

“Don’t you miss having a home?” David said, and the air around them stood still. 

Tommy’s heart stopped beating for a split second, and in that split second he had to decide whether he would explode or break down. It was an easy choice for someone like him.

“God, you sound just like them! I’m not stupid, you know. I get what this is really about. You don’t care about what’s best for me. You’re all just scared I’m gonna fuck up again like when I blew up my school. Because all I’m good for is getting people hurt and landing myself in jail, right, David?”

With a _bang_, the trash can next to their bench burst into pieces, sending bits of cardboard and plastic cups flying in all directions. Tommy gritted his teeth. That didn’t exactly help his case.

“Whoa, Tommy, calm down,” David said.

“Don’t tell me—” This time, Tommy felt it building up in every muscle of his body—a wave of anger too big to fit inside him, one that had to erupt. He took a deep breath.

“Look,” he said, just loud enough that David could hear it. “Tell Billy that I’m fine. I’m a big boy, and I can handle myself. There’s no need to be scared of me.”

He turned to leave.

“Tommy, wait.”

Tommy couldn’t bring himself to turn around, to look at David. He cocked his head over one shoulder.

“I can’t believe I really thought—” _What? _he pleaded with himself. _What did I think?_ Whatever it was, he had been wrong. “Never mind. Bye, David.”

Tommy’s next step was faster than the speed of light.

In the _whoosh_ of his wake, napkins and plastic wrappers stirred into the air and floated back down to the ground. Before the wind rushing past his ears devoured every other sound, Tommy almost thought he heard quiet words:

“I’m not scared of you.”

***

_Are you ok?_

No.

_Sorry about earlier_.

Nope.

David groaned. He had been trying to write a text to Tommy for the past hour. Nothing he could think to say seemed quite right.

_Stop being a stubborn ass and let your friends help you_, he typed out feverishly.

He locked his phone and threw it down on the bed beside him. A single sliver of orange light from the street outside stole through the curtains of his dark room. David flipped over onto his back and stared up at the illuminated patch of popcorn on his ceiling.

_What am I gonna do about Tommy?_ he thought.

Not that it was his job to do anything about Tommy. Billy said “just try,” and David had certainly tried. Hell of a lot of good it did.

But after seeing Tommy—the way his face lit up for just a moment when he saw David coming, the way he couldn’t sit still for two seconds, the way he literally exploded when he got upset—David couldn’t stop thinking about him. And, yeah, worrying about him. Not in a _he’s irresponsible and needs a babysitter _kind of way, but in a _he’s my friend and I don’t want him to be sad_ kind of way.

David sighed. Tommy Shepherd had been back in his life for all of one day, and David was already acting a fool over him. Again.

Oh well. If he was a fool, he was a fool. Nothing he could do about that. He picked up his phone again and stared at Tommy’s name in his contacts for a long time.

_Call me if you feel like it_. He pressed send and immediately stuffed his face into his pillow.

“Really?” he said aloud, voice muffled by the pillow. “That’s what we’re going with? Couldn’t come up with anything more pathetic?”

Usually, David was much better than this at hiding his feelings. It was just, with Tommy…

The thing was, since he realized he was bi, David had kissed two guys. One was Teddy, and that was obviously never happening again. The other was Tommy, and that…that was never happening again either. Tommy had made it painfully obvious that he was straight, that he wasn’t interested. But still, the fact remained that in the past two years, David hadn’t kissed anyone else. He didn’t _want_ to kiss anyone else. Not since Tommy.

Suddenly, his phone glowed bright, casting shadows across the room. _Tommy calling,_ the screen read.

David’s heart skipped a beat. He honestly hadn’t expected a response at all, let alone so soon. He answered the phone and cleared his throat.

“Hello?”

An impossibly loud commotion flooded into his ear from the other end of the call. Bass thumped, voices chattered, and someone in the background screamed the lyrics of a Dazzler classic.

“Heeeeyyyy, David! I got your text!” Tommy said. David could barely hear his voice over everything else, but he could practically smell the booze through the phone.

“Where are you?” David found himself shouting, as if he were the one in the middle of a party and not alone in his quiet bedroom.

“Hmmmm, that’s a good question.” Tommy paused in thought, and in his silence, David heard the dramatic, warbled grand finale of the Dazzler song. “I don’t know. Someone’s house. Hey! You should come!”

In spite of himself, David’s stomach swooped at the invitation.

“I thought you were mad at me.”

“What?!” Tommy’s voice was too loud now; it grated on David’s ear. “I could never be mad at you! Come on, man!”

As much as the chaos on the other end of the phone did _not_ sound like David’s thing, he was tempted to go. Would it kill him to loosen up a little? Go just a little wild? For about five seconds, he lived in a fantasy world where he showed up at the party and Tommy asked him to dance. And then he re-entered the real world.

“Tommy, I don’t even know where you are,” David said.

“You can track my phone! I know you can track my phone, man. You got that big ol’ brain.”

“I guess I could, but—”

“Bro, you gotta come!” Tommy yelled. “Please! You never go out with me!”

David flinched. It was almost like Tommy knew exactly what he was doing, using wording like that. And, well…David was a fool, after all.

“Fine. Gimme ten minutes to figure out where you are, and then…wait, how am I gonna get there? Are you even in New York?”

“Probably! You’ll figure it out! Big ol’ brain, right?!?”

“Yeah. I guess. See you soon.”

“See you soon! Kisses!” Tommy shouted, and the line went dead. David stared at the phone in his hand. Maybe he hadn’t re-entered the real world after all.

As soon as he recovered from the whirlwind of a conversation, David got to work on his computer. His hands flew across the keyboard with an intensity that suggested a life or death mission. He had to find Tommy before it was too late—before Tommy came to his senses, changed his mind, and told David to fuck off.

Now, David wasn’t proud of this, but he had some experience tracking people’s phones. Sometimes hunting people down came with the whole superhero gig. And sometimes…he just wanted to know where his friends were. What could he say, he liked to know things. Once or twice, he had even tracked Tommy as he gallivanted across the continent. David felt a little gross about doing that, but not gross enough to stop him from doing it again right now. Within 15 minutes, a bright red dot pinged on the screen in front of him. He breathed a sigh of relief when he recognized the map surrounding the dot as Hell’s Kitchen. So, Tommy hadn’t gone too far.

Before he left the apartment, David stopped in front of the mirror in his bedroom and looked at himself. It was stupid to worry about looking cute for someone who would probably only spare him a passing glance, but he still changed into a new button-down shirt and fiddled with his hair until he was satisfied with it.

On the way to the party, he tried not to get his hopes up. He really did try. But every time he thought about Tommy saying _I could never be mad at you _or _you never go out with me_ or the fact that he invited David at all, a light-headed, tingling sensation spread through his whole body.

_It’s just a party_. _Just have fun_, he told himself as he sat on a subway that couldn’t go as fast as he wanted it to. _Don’t think about Tommy. Just have fun._

The party, he soon found out, was in the penthouse of an upscale apartment building. He knew this because, even from the sidewalk below, he could hear the music and see the lights flashing in the windows. He took one step toward the door, and then—

“No way! You actually came!”

Tommy ran toward him from the dim alley beside the building. Before David had time to ask why he was down here instead of upstairs at the party, Tommy wrapped him in a sloppy hug.

“Hey,” David said, trying to catch his breath. Tommy reeked of alcohol and pot, and David _knew_ that was the only reason he was acting all affectionate, but that didn’t stop David’s heart pounding against his ribcage.

Tommy pulled away, but he kept a hand resting on David’s shoulder. It took every ounce of David’s self control to focus on anything else.

“We were getting out of here,” Tommy said, “but if David Alleyne is about to get lit, I have to see that.”

“Well, I don’t know about—” David stopped short. “Wait, ‘we’?”

A beautiful girl in a dress that was probably worth more money than David had seen in his life stepped out from the shadows of the alley.

“Tommy, come on. What’s taking so long?” she said.

Tommy’s hand immediately dropped from David’s shoulder.

“Change of plans,” Tommy said. “We’re gonna go back up to the party and get my friend wasted.”

“But we—”

Tommy draped an arm around her shoulders and leaned in close to whisper, “Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of time for that later.”

David felt like he had turned to stone. A burning need to scream or run away or punch something built up in him until he thought he would choke to death on the feeling, but he could do nothing other than stand there, cemented to the sidewalk, as he tried to process the situation unfolding in front of him.

Tommy and this girl…they were leaving the party together. They were leaving the party together, and they had stopped on the way in an alley to…to what? David imagined Tommy pinning her against the white brick wall of the building, imagined their bodies pressed together, panting as they shared warm breath.

David’s head swam. His face burned like he had a fever, and he feared that his knees would buckle any second. This was humiliating, the whole thing. There was no time to wallow in it now, though. He was here. This was happening. Against all logic, he had allowed himself to hope, and these were his consequences.

Barely aware of what he was doing, David followed Tommy and the girl into the building, up the stairs. The two of them might have forgotten David was there as far as he could tell. They whispered into each other’s ears and giggled and ignored him. Once, Tommy snuck a glance back at David and offered him a half-hearted smile. It only made David feel worse.

In the penthouse, at least a hundred people had crammed into a living room that was very nice, yes, and bigger than David’s whole apartment, but still not near big enough for a crowd this size. Bodies swayed and writhed against each other in a tangled mass as everyone danced to the music that blared so loud it made David’s teeth vibrate and gave him an instant headache.

Amid the chaos, suddenly Tommy was leaning into David’s ear.

“Let’s get you a drink!” he shouted over the music. David felt his breath on his neck.

“Um—” David cleared his throat, swallowed against the dry feeling in his mouth. “Actually, I think I’m good for now.”

“Come on! It’s a party!”

“I know, but I don’t—I’m just not much of a drinker. Sorry,” David said.

Tommy backed off much sooner than David thought he would. Tommy could be endlessly persistent sometimes.

“Whatever, bro,” Tommy said. “No big deal. Look, I’m gonna go dance with—I don’t remember her name—but you, go! Have fun!”

“Oh. I thought we would—”

“Mingle!” Tommy shouted, already morphing with the horde of dancers filling the room. “Find a cute girl or—or—a guy!”

David flinched at the face Tommy made when he said _or a guy_. Like he didn’t want to say it, like he had to spit the words out. Still…maybe he was right. Clearly, David wasn’t getting any attention from Tommy tonight. He had already lost sight of him in the crowd. It would be a shame to waste a perfectly good night out sulking over a guy who brought him to a party and then immediately abandoned him.

Actually, now that David thought about it, Tommy had made a habit of abandoning him. Earlier today, they were talking in the park, and Tommy left. A year ago, they were basically best friends, and Tommy left the whole _city_. Even that night when they kissed, Tommy left David sitting alone on a hillside.

David clenched his teeth. Tommy wasn’t worth any of this—the waiting, the worrying, the constant sting of rejection. It was time for David to move on, once and for all.

_Fuck it_, he thought, and he shoved through the swarm of people until he found the makeshift bar. He never drank because he always needed to have a clear head. He needed to be able to think things through and fix problems, all the time. Well, tonight, he was sick of thinking. He grabbed a bottle of vodka and, before he could think better of it, took two huge gulps. He gagged as the dry liquid burned through his throat, but he kept it down. And then he took another swig, for good measure.

David decided right then that whatever else he did tonight, he was going home with someone. Tonight, he was finally getting Tommy Shepherd out of his head.

***

The swarm of dancing bodies—people he had never seen before and would never see again—suffocated Tommy as he tried to move to the beat blaring through the speakers. He was looking for the girl he planned on going home with, but it was impossible to make out anyone’s face in the chaotic flashing light, and he was too drunk to remember what her outfit looked like. He had lost sight of David, too, almost immediately after wading into the crowd. That was probably for the best, though. Tommy didn’t trust his drunk self around David. Drunk Tommy would ruin everything.

Not that sober Tommy was much better.

After a few minutes, he gave up on the girl and the dancing. He wasn’t in the mood for any of this anymore. He was just beginning to come down from his high, and that was his least favorite place to be. It was usually right about now that he had to confront whatever had driven him to drink in the first place.

Tommy left the dance floor with his eyes scanning the room. He wasn’t quite sure what he was searching for, but as soon as he saw it, he knew. An open window on the other side of the penthouse led out onto a fire escape. Maybe if he could just get away for a second, be alone and clear his head, he would be all right. He could find David and they could have fun together, just like they used to.

Tommy clambered out the window and almost, _almost_ fell clean off the fire escape. His lightning-fast reflexes kicked in, and he caught himself on the railing, but just barely.

“I’m definitely too drunk for this,” he mumbled under his breath as he floppily made his way up the slim, shaky stairs that led to the roof.

Because the apartment building was full of rich people, the roof was just as nice as the inside. There were twinkly lights and fancy lounge-chairs. There were flowerboxes exploding with vibrant blossoms that had to be fake, because they were in full bloom in October. Up here, the breeze was strong and chilly, and it raised goosebumps on Tommy’s skin. It was a pretty good spot to do a little winding down. At least he was alone.

Just then, a loud groan came from the other end of the roof.

“Hello?” Tommy called.

Another groan was the only response.

“Are you ok?” Tommy slowly approached the source of the sound. It was too dark out to tell who or what it was from so far away, and Tommy couldn’t be too careful. After all, he was a superhero and the son of one of the most powerful people in existence, even if he forgot it sometimes.

As he inched closer, the soft glow of the fairy lights revealed a person lying flat on their back, an arm flung over their face. If it had been anyone else, Tommy wouldn’t have been able to tell who it was, but he would know the shape of that hand and the curve of that jaw anywhere.

“David?” Tommy said.

“Huh?” David shifted his arm just enough so he could see. “Oh, Tommy. Thank god.”

“What are you doing up here?”

David started to sit up, made a face like he had just stepped in dog shit, and fell back to the ground.

“This is horrible,” David whined. “How do you do this all the time?”

“Ah. So you did get a drink,” Tommy said as he plopped onto the ground beside David. “I know I make it look easy, but this kind of thing actually takes a lot of practice.”

David groaned again and squeezed his eyes shut.

“I think I puked in that flowerpot. Don’t really remember.”

“Based on the smell, I’m gonna go with yeah, you did.”

Tommy lay back and stretched out, folding his arms under his head. He squirmed until he was a few inches closer to David, for no reason other than that he was still too drunk to stop himself.

“I wish you wouldn’t have left me alone,” David blurted out.

Tommy’s whole body tensed up. _Don’t do this_, he thought in David’s direction. _Not now._

“I mean—” David stammered on, “If you hadn’t left me alone, I wouldn’t have chugged half a bottle of vodka in less than five minutes.”

Tommy laughed and relaxed a bit. Although, a part of him was…disappointed? No, that wasn’t it. He was drunk. He didn’t know what he was feeling.

“Actually, if I hadn’t left you alone, I probably would’ve drank the other half.”

This time, David laughed. “Good old Tommy.”

They let silence settle in around them, and it was nice. It was sort of like what Tommy had come up here for in the first place—a breath of fresh air, a break from the rest of the world—only this was better. In the quiet, Tommy could hear David inhaling and exhaling. The sound calmed him like waves rolling onto the sand.

At the same time, he was acutely aware that if David moved his arm the slightest bit, it would brush Tommy’s side. And that made Tommy very…not calm.

“It’s late,” he said, sitting up so fast his head spun. “We should get out of here.”

“What happened to your friend?” David said in a blank voice. He didn’t move.

“Who? Oh—” Tommy had already forgotten about the girl he’d fooled around with in the alley. “I think she’ll be all right.”

Tommy stood and looked down at David expectantly. Slowly, as if waking up from a sleep of a thousand years, David heaved himself into a standing position.

“Oh no,” he mumbled, and instantly doubled over, showering his legs in sick. Flecks of it splashed onto Tommy. “Sorry,” David panted. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s—um—it’ll be ok,” Tommy said, barely suppressing the urge to empty his own stomach. A stinging, sour smell filled the air. “Wow. Ok. We need to get you home. Can you walk?”

“Sure.” David took two wavering steps and nearly tipped over. He caught himself on a chair. “See?”

Tommy ran through their situation in his head. First of all, David was not going anywhere like this. He wouldn’t even make it down the fire escape. Second of all, Tommy was also drunk. It was fading, sure, but even this train of thought was hard to focus on. But most importantly, he marveled at the bizarre fact that _he _was the one thinking through the problem at all. David was helpless as a little lamb at the moment, and Tommy had to be the responsible one. Tommy had to come up with a plan.

“Right. Ok. So, here’s what we’re gonna do.” Tommy crouched down, bracing himself. “You’re gonna hop on my back, and I’ll get you to your apartment in under a minute.”

“NO!” David said instantly. “We can’t do that.”

“Look, I know what you’re thinking. Going so fast will probably make you sick again, but that’s fine, _as long as you aim away from my face_. Got it?”

“That’s not the reason. I just remembered I’m mad at you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re just—you’re—you’re Tommy!”

“You’re drunk, bro,” Tommy said, desperate to end this and put the whole mess of a day behind him. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Let’s—”

“No! I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“What is your problem?”

“I just told you! You’re my problem!” David shouted, and he fell onto his bottom.

Now Tommy started getting angry, too. What the hell did David have to be mad about? He was the one who had got Tommy’s stupid hopes up that they would start hanging out again, just to turn around and play messenger for Billy. And here Tommy was, trying to help him anyway. And David had the nerve to say _he _was mad?

“You know what?” Tommy yelled back. “I’m mad at you, too! But I can’t just leave you here on some random roof, so get on my damn back, and we’ll talk about this later.”

David grumbled under his breath, but after a few seconds, he pulled himself up off the ground again and walked over to Tommy.

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you for running away,” David said as he draped his limbs around Tommy.

“Yeah, well, I don’t forgive you, either.” Tommy stole a glance at David’s face where it rested on his shoulder. Suddenly, he was glad David had picked a fight. It was easier this way. “Hold on tight.”

When he felt David’s arms and legs tighten around him, Tommy sucked in a deep breath and took off. That was at 1:04 a.m.

At 1:05 a.m., he skidded to a stop in front of David’s apartment building.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, ok.” Tommy said. He felt David heaving and knew what was coming. He set David down as gently but quickly as he could and put a few feet between them. Sure enough, David fell to his hands and knees and hurled on the sidewalk.

“You good?” Tommy asked.

“Fine,” David said. “I’m fine.”

He stood up and brushed his hands on his pants. He emanated a strange level of dignity for someone who had thrown up on himself three times in the past hour. 

“Well, if you think you can get up the stairs by yourself, I’ll head out.”

“Thank you,” David said softly.

Tommy felt a layer of his anger melt away.

“Yeah, well, that’s what friends are for, I guess.”

“You can stay if you want,” David said, even quieter. “If you’re tired or whatever. You can stay the night.”

Tommy knew it was a bad idea. He felt it in his bones. It wouldn’t be good for either of them.

But.

Maybe he was still drunk and that’s why he felt like making a bad decision, or maybe he wasn’t drunk at all and he just really, _really_ wanted to stay. Either way, before Tommy knew what was happening, he was curled up in David Alleyne’s bed, wearing David Alleyne’s t-shirt, while David Alleyne breathed, deep and even, beside him.

***

When David woke up the next morning, he had only the slightest idea of where he was. He opened his eyes, and the second the sunlight streaming in through the window hit them, he snapped them shut again. His brain pounded against his skull, his mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and he had a horrible taste in the back of his throat. The bitter memory of vodka sliding down his throat made him gag, but there was nothing left in his stomach to hurl up. Drinking, he decided, was a mistake he would not be making again anytime soon.

Pacing himself this time, he slowly opened his eyes. Ok. So at least he was in his own room. Somehow, he had made it home. But still, something was off. And that’s when David’s sleepy brain registered that he wasn’t alone.

Someone was in the bed with him. But they weren’t _just _in the bed with him. Their warm body huddled against his back, with an arm wrapped around his waist. David tensed up. He vaguely remembered his mission to go home with someone last night, but he definitely didn’t remember going through with it. And he had never had a one-night stand before.

Gently, so as not to wake the person whose breath he could feel on his neck, David rolled over to assess the damage. When a tangled mop of white hair filled his vision, he froze.

David’s brain abandoned higher functioning, and all he could think was _No way no way no way no way. _This was not possible, and yet it was definitely Tommy Shepherd in David’s bed. It was definitely Tommy Shepherd lying so close to him that their skin touched in several places.

Ok. An impossible thing was happening, but David could think it through. He was a certified genius, he reminded himself. First and most importantly, David was certain that even though he and Tommy had apparently slept together, they hadn’t _slept together_. No matter how drunk he was, he would remember that. And besides, Tommy would never.

So. Options. David _could _just go back to sleep and deal with it later. Maybe Tommy would wake up first, and then it would be his problem. Then again, if Tommy woke up to find David in his arms, there was no telling how he would react. It would be more sensible—and easier on both of them—if David got out of bed right now and pretended this never happened. Tommy wouldn’t ever have to know. They could go back to being noodles-and-coffee friends and move on with their lives. Logically, David knew which was the smart choice. The healthy choice. But it was hard to be logical when all he wanted to do was lean in to Tommy, close his eyes, and imagine that his life was really like this.

The cold, hard truth, though, was that this was not his life. This was a one-time thing, a mistake that Tommy would brush off his shoulder and never think about again, just like when David kissed him. The thought of that night—of Tommy pushing him away, running off to dance with Kate—lodged into David like a jagged shard of glass.

With the ghost of memory aching in his chest, David tore himself free from Tommy. Quietly as he could, he left the bedroom and Tommy behind. He did his best to smother the part of himself that longed to turn back for one last glimpse of what might have been. 

An hour later, Tommy trudged out of the bedroom, eyes half closed, stretching his arms out as far as they would go. He wore an old t-shirt of David’s, a pair of boxer-briefs, and nothing else. David averted his eyes as he stood at the stove, frying fifteen strips of bacon. He himself would only eat two slices, but he was very familiar with Tommy’s appetite.

“Morning,” David said. He grinned at Tommy’s wild bedhead.

“Sup,” Tommy mumbled, collapsing into a chair at the table shoved into David’s tiny kitchen. He rubbed his tired eyes aggressively. “What happened last night? I can’t remember anything.”

“Honestly? Not sure. Last thing I remember is showing up at the party.” If he was being _completely_ honest, David also remembered being really upset when Tommy ran off to find some girl, but he figured mentioning that would only start trouble.

“Guess that means it was a good night,” Tommy said around the yawn that cracked his mouth open. “Thanks for letting me have the bed. You didn’t have to do that. I’m used to sleeping on couches.”

“Oh…” David felt the heat rising in his cheeks and suddenly became extra focused on poking the bacon around in its pan. Tommy didn’t remember. It was for the best, David told himself. He would lean into it. “Yeah. No problem. I passed out on the couch anyway.”

“Well, I slept better than I have in ages, so I appreciate it. Is there coffee?”

“Of course there is. I’ve known you for how many years?”

David grabbed the full pot of coffee he had been keeping warm for Tommy and set it on the table in front of him.

Tommy made a squeamish face. “Do you have—?”

“Cream and sugar, yeah. Be patient, young Thomas.” David rummaged around in a cabinet until he found the sugar bowl and the bottle of s’mores-flavored creamer that Tommy liked so much. As he handed them over to Tommy he said, “You know, for someone who loves coffee as much as you do, you sure hate actually tasting coffee.”

“I don’t hate it,” Tommy said, dumping at least a fourth of the bottle of creamer into his coffee mug. “I just find it easier to enjoy when it tastes like something else.”

David laughed and shook his head. “Whatever you say.”

While Tommy slurped his coffee, David scrambled eggs. They didn’t say much—Tommy was still half asleep—but it was enough for David that Tommy was still here. It almost felt like normal, like old times, when they would spend whole days doing nothing together. David had been afraid they would never get this back, especially after their…conversation…in the park yesterday.

As soon as he remembered Tommy’s outburst, David’s stomach turned. They were going to have to talk about it, and Tommy was _not _going to like it. But David needed Tommy to know… Well. They just needed to talk about it.

David piled most of the bacon and eggs onto one plate for Tommy and gave himself a normal human-sized portion. He carried the plates over to the table and sat down across from Tommy.

“Have I told you you’re my favorite person in the world?” Tommy said, immediately stuffing three whole pieces of bacon into his mouth.

David took a deep breath. It would be better to get it over with now, while Tommy was in a good mood and his mouth was too full to yell.

“So…does that mean you’re done being mad at me for yesterday?”

Tommy said something completely unintelligible because, again, he was trying to chew three whole pieces of bacon at once. Based on his expression, David guessed he was trying to say, “What?”

In seconds, Tommy’s face dropped. He finished chewing and swallowed hard.

“Oh yeah,” Tommy mumbled. “That. I was kind of hoping we were letting that go.”

“Well, we’re not,” David said.

“Fine.” The rest of the food on Tommy’s plate was forgotten. “If you have something to say to me, just say it, David.”

“Are you going to let me? Because when I tried to say it yesterday, you freaked out and blew up a trash can.”

Tommy stood up so fast David’s eyes couldn’t follow him. The sound of his chair scraping the floor grated on David’s ears.

“Because I knew you would say something judgy, like you just did!” Tommy said. “I get enough of that from Billy and Teddy and Kate and _everyone else_ in my life, and I don’t need it from you, too, ok?”

By the time David blinked, Tommy had dashed back into the bedroom, changed into his own clothes, and come back. He was going to run away again.

David stood up. He didn’t know what to do. Should he go over to Tommy, grab him, and make him listen, or should he give him space? Should he keep talking? It seemed like no matter what he said, Tommy took it the wrong way.

“Tommy, I swear I didn’t mean—”

“I _know _what you meant. You meant that I’m dangerous and you don’t trust me. None of you do. And that’s fine—it’s—it’s whatever—but I’m sick of dealing with it. Just leave me alone.”

Before David could take a step, Tommy was halfway out the front door of the apartment.

“When you report back to my brother,” Tommy said without turning around, “tell him I don’t need him to take care of me.”

David tried to run after him, but the door slammed before he even made it out of the kitchen. David sighed. He was helpless here. It was over, and now Tommy hated him. It was time to give it up.

But, unfortunately for himself (and maybe for Tommy, too), he was David Alleyne. Prodigy. He was an X-man, a Young Avenger, and one of the smartest people on the planet. He didn’t do giving up. Especially not when it came to people he cared about.

As much as he wished he didn’t, David cared about Tommy a whole awful lot. 

***

Tommy ran. He didn’t really know where he was going, but he knew he had to get _away_. Away from David, away from the city where too much always happened—just away. So, Tommy ran. And he kept running.

The most frustrating thing about all of this was that Tommy _knew _he was a mess. His friends were scared he would fuck things up? Well, so was he. He knew he was reckless, he knew he was irresponsible. Hell, he thought about the day he accidentally blew his school up every day. So he didn’t understand why it hurt so fucking bad when his friends told him he needed help.

No. Not when his _friends_ told him. He didn’t run away or cause explosions or feel like the world was ending when Billy or Teddy or Kate said they thought he would be better off under supervision. This was all because of David. When _David _made him feel like a monster or an idiot or whatever this feeling was, it stuck. It felt _real_. Which wasn’t fair at all, and, for that matter, didn’t make any sense! What was David to him anyway? Just another friend he made along the way. Just another person he could call when he got bored.

Tommy stopped, and the blur that had been the rest of the world burst into life around him. Tommy didn’t feel like running anymore. All the anger and energy drained out of him, and he was nothing but tired. Tired of everything.

He looked around. He was in…the woods? Which woods, he had no idea. All he heard were birds cawing in the distance, bugs humming, and water running somewhere nearby—no cars, which meant he had made it out of the city. At least that was something. He wondered how long he had been running and how long it would take for him to find his way back to something familiar, but then he stopped wondering anything. That was a problem for later.

Right now, he would just enjoy himself. He could have fun in the woods, right? Isn’t that what he was best at, having fun?

So he found the stream and went for a swim. He chased some rabbits around. He climbed the tallest tree he could find, climbed until he was high above all the other treetops, until he could see for miles and miles. It was beautiful. The sun was high overhead, the sky was bright and blue, the air was as crisp and cool as an Autumn afternoon could be.

But none of it mattered. None of it _worked_. No matter what he did, all he could think about was David. David showing up at the party even though he _hated _parties, David lying next to him on a rooftop somewhere in silence, David clinging to his back when he brought him home, David giving him a t-shirt and saying _no, it’s ok, we can share the bed._ David yelling at him because he was mad about—Tommy still didn’t know what.

Because, ok, yeah, Tommy lied a little. He remembered everything that happened last night. Everything. He wished he could forget, but he couldn’t, and the fact that David seemed to remember none of it only made the whole thing a bigger pile of shit.

And the worst part? The _worst _part was that Tommy woke up this morning before the sun, and he turned over and he saw David lying there and he scooted closer and pressed himself against David’s back and he wrapped him in his arms and he didn’t know _why_ he did it but he did it and it felt good and right and—and when he woke up again, David was gone and it was like none of it ever happened and David lied about sleeping on the couch which meant _he_ wanted to forget about it, too. 

Which was fine. Because Tommy didn’t care. Because it was just another stupid, impulsive thing he did, and it didn’t mean anything.

Tommy gulped several deep breaths of the perfect Autumn air, and he looked out over the sea of trees that stretched on forever. He remembered something else that David said. _Don’t you miss having a home_? Did he miss having a home? Could he miss something he never really had in the first place? He knew what home felt like, though. When he was with the Young Avengers, the first time, when they were all just kids who wanted to save the world and nothing was complicated yet. That was home. Billy and Teddy and Kate and Cassie and Eli were home. David was— Well.

Maybe they were right. Maybe he should move in with Billy and Teddy, let himself settle down, take up space in a corner of the world he could call his own.

But _could _he call it his own, if it already belonged to Billy and Teddy? If he was just some stuck-on thing like a parasite stealing a piece of their perfect life? Could he feel at home knowing the two of them only wanted him there because they were scared of what he would do on his own—or worse, because they pitied him? Someone else might be able to live with that, but Tommy couldn’t.

_Never mind all that,_ he thought. _Where to next?_

This was an opportunity, at the end of the day. An opportunity to leave this old place full of baggage and go somewhere new and exciting. He could meet new people, see new things. Feel new feelings.

And besides, this was way too much thinking for Tommy. He liked doing a lot more than contemplating. It was spending time with David and the rest of them that made him slow down and burn out like this. He should’ve known better than to come back to New York. He would remember this the next time he started to miss them.

He had just decided he would try out Canada for a while when he heard something that made his blood run cold.

“Tommy?” someone shouted, far below him. “Tommy! I know you’re out here somewhere.”

It was a familiar voice. And it was a voice that really wasn’t good for Tommy to hear when he was trying to pack his feelings into a tiny box and move on with his life.

“Tommy,” David called again. “If you don’t answer me I’m just gonna call Billy to come and cast a hide-and-seek spell, so you might as well give up.”

Tommy groaned. Having a reality warper for a little brother (Tommy was the older twin, he could feel it) was endlessly annoying.

“I’m up here,” he yelled down to David. But he made no move to leave his perch in the tree.

He heard footsteps crunching in the dry leaves that blanketed the forest floor, and then, so far below him he couldn’t make out its features, David’s face peered up at him from the ground.

“What are you doing up there?”

“Don’t worry,” Tommy said. “I’m not terrorizing baby birds or anything.”

“Could you come down?” David said. There was a long pause. Tommy had no intention of leaving his spot. He was safe up here. “Please?”

Tommy rolled his eyes, but he still didn’t answer. He trained his gaze on a cloud floating above him. He had moved on. He was going to party all over Canada and it was going to be amazing. He wasn’t letting David drag him back into the mess.

“Ok, fine,” David said. “Be like that.”

Tommy heard rustling and thought for a split second that he had avoided another uncomfortable conversation. And then the branch he sat on quivered the tiniest bit, and he realized what was actually happening. When he looked down, he saw David heaving himself onto the tree’s lowest branch.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tommy yelled.

“Look, I’m not as fast as you.” David grabbed the next branch up and scrambled for footing on a knot poking out of the tree trunk. “So if I climb this damn tree, you better still be at the top when I get there.”

Tommy shook his head in frustration. “Are you stupid?”

“Maybe,” David said between huffs of breath as he continued to climb. “Now stop distracting me or I’m gonna fall.”

Tommy realized he was powerless to stop him. David really couldn’t take a hint, could he? When someone ran out into the middle of the woods, climbed a tree, and refused to come down, that usually meant they didn’t want to talk. And here David was, working his ass off to talk anyway. He was as bad as Billy and Teddy—no, actually, he was worse. If Tommy told Billy and Teddy off, they would give him at least 24 hours before they started badgering him again.

As David made progress—painfully slow progress for Tommy to watch, but progress nonetheless—Tommy tried to muster the aggravation he knew he should be feeling. This was highly annoying behavior on David’s part. It was not something a normal friend would do. In spite of all that—or maybe, _because _of it?—Tommy was straight up delighted. It was embarrassing and confusing and he couldn’t interrogate the feeling too closely or he would probably blow up the whole forest, but deep down, Tommy was so happy David was here.

Wait—where even _was _here? Tommy couldn’t figure out where he was, so how did David?

“How exactly did you find me?” Tommy called down to David, who was about halfway up the tree by now. Until watching a normal person try to climb it, Tommy hadn’t fully appreciated how tall the tree was. It was at least 80 feet high.

David collapsed onto a wide branch and took some deep breaths before yelling back up to him.

“You told me to track your phone, remember?” Another pause for David to catch his breath. “So I tracked you, and I got America to dropkick me a portal to this random forest in the middle of Vermont—do you know how far Vermont is from New York, by the way? Did you have to be so dramatic?”

“Oops,” Tommy said under his breath. He had never even been to Vermont.

David sucked in one more breath and stood back up. He grabbed another branch and searched for his next foothold.

“Anyway,” David said. “America says we owe her one.”

“We?”

“Yeah, we! You’re the one who—agh!”

A _crack_ echoed through the forest, and Tommy saw David’s foot slip. His arms flailed as he tried to catch something—anything—to keep himself from falling, but it was too late.

For Tommy, the next few seconds happened in extreme slow motion. David hurtling toward the forest floor—the _whack_ of branches slapping him as he fell—fear surging into all of Tommy’s muscles and yanking him into action. Before David could finish falling, Tommy was there, on the ground, waiting with open arms.

David crashed into him with all the force of a brick wall. Tommy smacked against the ground so hard he couldn’t breathe, especially with David’s weight pinning him down. He didn’t care about breathing, though. In that moment, there was only one thing on his mind. David lay limply on top of him, one side of his head smattered with blood.

“David?” Tommy croaked hoarsely, as soon as he had enough air in his lungs to speak. “Davidcanyouhearmeareyouokpleasebeok?”

Suddenly, David gasped and coughed and spluttered into life. He sat up, pinched his eyes closed, shook his head. “Whoa.”

Tommy’s hands shook, his face got hot, tears welled in his eyes. The adrenaline was wearing off, and he was breaking down. “Jesuschristyouscaredtheshitoutofmedon’teverdothatagain.”

“Either I have a concussion or you’re talking way too fast because all I’m hearing is gibberish,” David said. “Slow down. You all right?”

“What?” Tommy said, desperately trying to get a hold on himself. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Of course I’m fine. You…you’re the one who just fell fifty feet. Dumbass.”

“You’re right.” David stood up and gingerly stretched his arms and legs, checking for damage. “But I’m fine, too. Thanks to you.”

David reached down and offered Tommy a hand. Tommy ignored it. He pushed himself off the ground and shook the dirt and leaves from his hair.

“No big deal. That’s what superheroes do.”

“Seriously, Tommy.” Before Tommy could protest, David wrapped him in a hug. “You just saved my life. Thank you.”

David was warm and solid against Tommy’s chest. His arms squeezed tight and firm, while Tommy’s arms hung, lifeless, at his sides. For a moment, Tommy let it happen. For a moment, Tommy acknowledged that he felt safe and secure and important. For a moment, Tommy almost enjoyed being held by David Alleyne.

Then the moment passed.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Tommy said. He shoved David off of him. It was a playful shove, he thought, a friendly shove—a joke. But watching the light dim in David’s eyes made Tommy feel like he had pushed him off a cliff.

“So,” Tommy said in an attempt to brush past the events of the past five minutes. “You came all the way out here. You almost died. What for?”

David sighed. “Ok. I keep messing this up and saying everything all wrong, so before I start talking and inevitably end up with my foot in my mouth, I need you to promise me that you’re going to hear me out and let me finish talking before you react.”

“If this is about me moving in with Billy and Teddy—”

“It is,” David said. “But also it isn’t. Please just listen.”

Tommy narrowed his eyes. One part of him knew where David was going, and he didn’t want to hear it. Another part of him was still stuck on the moment when the branch broke beneath David’s foot—the split second when Tommy had been sure David was about to fall to his death—and that part of him would be happy to listen to David talk all day, about anything he wanted, just because he could.

“Fine,” Tommy said.

David smiled. “Great. Ok, so, first of all, you should know that Billy totally blackmailed me into getting involved and that, even though I know they care about you a lot and they mean well, I think you living with Billy and Teddy is a terrible idea.”

Tommy perked up. “It’s good to hear someone else say it.”

“Right! See, we agree on this part! We’re on the same page! But—and this is the part where I’m gonna say something stupid and mess it all up, so just bear with me—but I still think it would be good for you to have someplace to live. Not just somewhere to sleep and keep your clothes, but like, you know—”

“A home,” Tommy grumbled. “Yeah. This is the part I’ve heard before.”

“No, actually, you haven’t, which is why I asked you to _listen_ before you get mad. I was thinking, Tommy needs a place to live, maybe with a roommate, and Billy and Teddy are out of the question. Which in turn got me thinking, who else does Tommy know who has a whole apartment to themself and an extra bedroom no one’s using?”

David gave Tommy a pointed look, but Tommy didn’t understand what he was getting at. Tommy knew lots of people, and he was sure lots of them had apartments and empty bedrooms, but none of them wanted him around all the time. After several seconds, David still didn’t finish his thought, so Tommy shrugged.

“Oh my god,” David said, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. “It’s me, Tommy. I’m saying you could move in with me.”

Tommy blinked. David was saying they could live together. David was saying he wouldn’t mind sharing his home with Tommy. David was saying things could go back to the way they were before Tommy left. Maybe David was saying that he had missed Tommy, and maybe Tommy had to admit that he had missed David, too. Maybe David was saying something Tommy wasn’t ready to hear—or. Or David was saying that even though he thought Tommy moving in with Billy and Teddy was a bad idea, he still thought Tommy needed supervision, and he was willing to provide an alternative.

Tommy shook his head. “I can take care of myself,” he said quietly.

A beat. There was no sound but a breeze through the leaves. And then—

“I know,” David said. “But you don’t have to.”

In a split second, Tommy remembered a thousand things. Meeting David at work—at _work_ of all places—getting noodles, getting coffee, talking about his life to someone who actually listened, who actually cared, for the first time in a very long time. Tommy remembered disappearing, he remembered the darkness, the confusion, and the pain when the not-Patriot took him. He remembered the moment when it was over, when he opened his eyes and realized it was David who had saved him. He remembered, just last night, how good it felt to be the responsible one, even just for a second. How good it felt to know he was keeping David safe. And he remembered David’s head lying on his chest, limp and covered in blood, only a few minutes ago. He remembered the exact sound of David’s breath when he woke up, alive.

“We can take care of each other,” David said.

Tommy smiled.

***

He said yes. Somehow, even though David had never imagined a universe in which he said yes, he said yes.

And now Tommy slept in the next room, only a few inches of drywall away, every night.

Sure, David recognized that it probably wasn’t super healthy for him, living under the same roof as the person he was trying to get over. Seeing him every day. Cooking him breakfast. Sitting on the couch with him, late into the night, watching stupid reality TV shows. David recognized it, but he had a hard time caring.

And if, sometimes, he lay as still as he possibly could in his bed, held his breath, and strained his ears trying to hear Tommy breathing through the wall, and if he felt a gaping empty vacuum fill his lungs as he attempted to recapture the feeling of waking up next to Tommy—well, that was a price David was willing to pay for now.

“Hey,” he said one night, far past midnight, as they lounged in front of the TV. Tommy lay all stretched out, limbs flung in every direction, as he usually did. Their legs were so close to touching, and, this particular night, David was feeling far too comfortable and far too brave.

“Yeah?” Tommy said drowsily.

“Are you happy you stayed?” David asked.

Tommy sat up. “What do you mean?”

“You were gonna leave New York again, right? But you didn’t. So are you happy you didn’t?”

_Are you happy here? _David was really asking. _Are you happy with me?_

“I guess,” Tommy said. He shrugged.

David didn’t feel comfortable anymore, and he definitely didn’t feel brave. The silence between them had gone all stiff and stuffy, and he wished he hadn’t said anything. He was getting carried away, and if he wasn’t careful he was going to ruin everything.

“It’s late,” David said. He yawned for effect. “You ready to call it a night?”

“Actually,” Tommy said, staring straight ahead at the TV, “I think I might go out for a bit.”

“Oh.” David tensed, waiting for an invitation. Tommy said nothing more. “Well. I’m a grandpa, you know, so I’m hitting the sack.”

“Night.”

“Night,” David said.

He lay in bed, staring at the dark ceiling, until he heard Tommy shut off the TV. There was some rummaging, probably Tommy getting dressed, and then the front door opened and shut.

It was really not a big deal, David thought. Tommy went out all the time. It was what he did. He dicked around with David during the day, and he partied at night. That was the way their friendship had always worked, since the very beginning.

So why did David feel like everything was about to change?

Out of habit, his body went still and his breaths went shallow. But no matter how quiet he was, he would not hear Tommy breathing. Because Tommy wasn’t there.

With the knowledge of that filling every corner of his mind, David gradually drifted into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, David woke up and went straight to the kitchen. Tommy was nowhere to be seen, but it was before noon, so that wasn’t unusual. David switched on the coffeemaker and pulled his frying pan out of the dishwasher. He had a routine. Wake up, cook breakfast, and eventually Tommy would roll out of his bedroom, hardly awake but smelling the food. _They _had a routine. David smiled as he leaned into the fridge to pull out a carton of eggs.

“Oh,” a voice said from behind him. David started, and the carton slipped from his hands. If the owner of the voice had been Tommy, he would have dashed across the room in a fraction of a second and caught the eggs before they hit the ground. But it was not Tommy who had spoken. The eggs splattered against the floor, a pool of bright yellow yolks spreading across the tile like blood from a wound.

David turned to see a young woman standing awkwardly in the door to Tommy’s bedroom, wearing nothing but a t-shirt David was pretty sure belonged to Tommy. The girl had dark skin and curly black hair, and even with the shadow of morning gunk and a hangover clouding her face, she was gorgeous.

“Sorry,” she said, grimacing. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I just—um—bathroom?”

David couldn’t think. He didn’t know why he was so shocked. Tommy _loved_ one night stands. David knew this. And he should have known that sooner or later, Tommy would bring someone home with him.

Absentmindedly, David gestured in the direction of the bathroom.

“Thanks,” she said, and then she was gone. David heard the toilet flush, and the shower turn on, and still he stood in the middle of the kitchen while the egg guts slowly seeped out of the carton. The cold, sticky liquid reached his foot, but David didn’t move.

_What was I thinking?_

Asking Tommy to move in, hoping they would—what, exactly? Bond? Get closer to each other than they were to anyone else? Except that they had done all of that before, and David hadn’t been satisfied then, either. And it still hadn’t been enough to keep Tommy around, to make him see—to make him see what David saw. David wanted to give Tommy a home, but Tommy didn’t want the kind of home David was offering.

The problem wasn’t that they needed to spend more time together. The problem was that they were never, _ever_ going to want the same thing. David’s brain had known that for a long time, but his heart was just beginning to catch on. The feeling of defeat, heavy and cold, settled in his gut.

“Morning,” Tommy said in his familiar croaky morning voice through his familiar yawn. Just like everything was normal and fine and David wasn’t breaking into a million pieces.

“Morning,” David answered. He snapped out of it because he had to. He bent over, picked up the carton, and saw that none of the eggs had been spared.

“Ha,” Tommy said. “Nice work, genius.”

“Yeah,” David mumbled. He gathered all the shell pieces he could into the carton and tossed it in the trash can. When he heard the kitchen faucet running, he turned to see Tommy had already grabbed the mop from the broom closet and was filling a bucket with water.

_That_, David thought as Tommy sloshed sudsy water onto the sticky mess that covered the floor, _That right there._

_That_ was why David couldn’t bring himself to move on, no matter how hard he tried. Tommy Shepherd was a whirlwind. He was the single most confusing person on the planet.

He was one of the best, too. And he had no idea.

“So, who’s your friend?” David asked, trying to sound casual. While Tommy mopped the floor—_because Tommy Shepherd is mopping the floor for me when I didn’t even ask—_David pulled two mugs from the cupboard and poured coffee.

“You met Mara?” Tommy said. “I figured she left after I went to sleep. We met at the club last night. She’s cool.”

“She’s pretty,” David said.

Tommy smiled. “Holy shit, yeah she is.”

If once, just _once_ Tommy had that look on his face while he talked about—David killed all his trains of thought before they could go any further.

“Hey,” the girl—Mara—said as she stepped out of the bathroom. She still wore Tommy’s shirt, and a few leftover drops of water rolled down her bare legs.

“Hey, you,” Tommy said.

The mop fell from his hands, forgotten, and hit the tile with a dull thud. He walked over to Mara and wrapped his arms around her waist, planting a kiss on her cheek.

“I had a lot of fun last night,” he said softly.

Watching Tommy with her—the way he touched her so gently, smoothed her hair, looked into her eyes when he spoke to her—made it far too easy to imagine the way things could be if only…

David took his coffee and went back to his room without a word. If Tommy and Mara noticed him leaving, they didn’t care.

Alone, David crawled into his bed and curled up under the covers, pulling them over his head to block out the morning sun shining through his window. And David did something that he never did—something that he never could do if he wanted to keep his sanity:

He let himself remember the feeling of Tommy’s lips, soft and warm against his own. No matter how many years passed, David would never forget the swooping sensation in his stomach when he realized it was _Tommy_ he was kissing, it was _Tommy _who, just for a second, kissed him back.

The memory was so good it burned him. It was too close to being perfect, while still being nothing at all. David tore the wound open. He ripped off the scab and let the blood trickle out of him. He would _never_ be the girl at the party, the one Tommy left him to find. He would _never _be the girl in the living room right now, being held and kissed and admired. All David would ever be was this: alone, hopelessly yearning.

Even so, he could remember. And he could dream.

It made everything much, much worse, but he could dream.

***

To be honest, Tommy didn’t feel like going out tonight. He felt like microwaving some popcorn and watching every Shrek movie until he dozed off on the couch. David would be there, too, obviously.

But Tommy was pulling his shoes on and heading out the door anyway. He couldn’t stay in, especially not with David, because _it _was happening all over again. David was taking up way too much of his life. Tommy wasn’t mad about that, exactly—it just wasn’t normal. Tommy had pretty limited experience when it came to friendship, sure, but he at least knew it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be so _much_.

When he reached the sidewalk, Tommy pulled out his phone. What would it be tonight? He scrolled through his contacts and paused on Kate’s name. He was seconds away from texting her when he decided against it. The last time they talked, he yelled at her and told her to fuck off, and he wasn’t ready to apologize. He hovered again when he came to Teddy, but god, Billy and Teddy were just so boring to hang out with. All they ever did was gush about their latest date night or bicker over wedding details, and even on the rare occasions when they got drunk, after about three drinks they were good for nothing but gazing into each other’s eyes and spouting sappy shit about how in love they were. Ugh. No.

So, he would go solo once again. Actually, it was better this way. It was easier to make bad (a.k.a. fun) decisions when no one was around to judge him.

Tonight, he decided, he would try something new. He needed a little excitement. He needed a distraction. Most of all, he needed to get wasted. He racked his brain for a minute and remembered some girl he had probably slept with telling him about a club in the Village that had just opened. She said everybody went there now, and she wanted to go so bad, but she couldn’t get in. A little challenge, and a place that was probably full of new girls he could sleep with and mostly forget about? Sounded like a good time to Tommy. 

Without another thought, he burst into a sprint—which, for Tommy, meant the whole world melted into slow motion around him. People on the sidewalk stopped moving, cars went quiet, the wind died. It would be peaceful if it wasn’t so lonely. Whenever Tommy moved at his own pace, he felt so free, but he also felt like the only person left alive.

In less than a minute, he skidded to a stop on a bustling street in the Village. It didn’t take him long to find the club, mostly because the line of people waiting to get in wrapped all the way around the block. Immediately, Tommy was happy with his choices. The line was packed with some of the hottest girls he had ever seen in his life. And if these were the ones that couldn’t get in, what was it like inside? Tommy grinned as he slipped unnoticed behind the bouncer and through the cracked door. The ability to move faster than the human eye could follow came in handy for more than just superheroing.

Inside, colored lights flashed and wordless music vibrated the walls. People swarmed everywhere, most of them crammed together on the dance floor. Tommy paid them no attention. First things first. He made a beeline for the bar.

“Four shots,” Tommy yelled over the music.

The bartender looked him up and down and smiled. “Whatever you want,” he said.

As soon as the bartender handed him the shots, Tommy pounded them down one after the other.

“Oh, honey,” the bartender said, his face hovering between pity and amusement. Tommy smirked and winked.

It was going to be a good night.

As he eased himself into the middle of the dancing crowd and waited for the shots to kick in, Tommy realized something was off. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something made this place different from the clubs he was used to. Well, whatever. He said he wanted something new, right?

Tommy kept dancing, and soon his brain got hazier and his limbs got looser and he forgot all about wanting to be at home. Someone’s hands were in his hair, then someone else’s grabbed his waist, and he didn’t know who the hands belonged to in the mass of bodies, but it didn’t matter.

“You’re cute,” someone said to him, and it took Tommy longer than it should have to realize that it was a guy.

“Thanks,” Tommy said.

“You wanna get out of here?” the guy asked.

Again, Tommy’s drunk brain took a long time to process the question. Finally, he realized what the guy was asking. 

“Oh. Sorry. I’m not gay.”

The guy gave him a strange look. “You sure about that?”

Pffff. Tommy was sure. Of course he was sure. He definitely liked women—no, he _loved_ women—and he had never even thought about—he had never even…

Suddenly, Tommy felt the air of the room pressing down on him. The people surrounding him on every side weren’t just dancing anymore, they were trapping him in. He felt lightheaded, and he wished for maybe the first time in his life that he hadn’t taken so many shots.

“I’m—sorry—I have to—”

Tommy shoved people aside until he escaped the dance floor. He found a blank patch of wall and leaned back against it, breathing heavy. He squeezed his eyes shut against the flashing lights. The bartender must have given him something weird. He had never reacted to alcohol like this.

“Hey there,” someone said. “I’ve never seen you here before.”

Tommy opened his eyes to find another guy talking to him. This one was tall, with brown skin and dark, curly hair. He reminded Tommy a little bit of— He killed that train of thought. Tommy felt panic surge through him, felt it building up to explosion. He couldn’t stop it—especially not now, especially not when he was so drunk he could hardly think straight.

The light panel hanging above Tommy’s head erupted into a thousand pieces with a _boom_ that shook the room. Little bits of plastic and glass rained down on the crowd around him. People shouted. People ran. But Tommy was frozen.

_This is exactly what they were afraid of,_ Tommy thought.

Billy and Teddy and Kate and David and everyone—they all thought he would do something stupid and get people hurt. And here he was: being stupid, hurting people. They were right. He couldn’t be trusted.

“Tommy?” someone said. “Tommy, is that you?”

Tommy snapped back to his surroundings. The floor around him was still covered in debris, but people were starting to dance again. Apparently it wasn’t that big of a deal after all.

“Tommy!”

Tommy looked around and saw Billy, somehow, emerging from the crowd, tugging Teddy behind him.

“What are you doing here?” Billy asked. “Is there something you forgot to tell us? Is David here, too?”

“David? Why would he—” Tommy blinked. Too much was happening. “What are _you _doing here? You’re the lame one who never leaves your house.”

Billy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, ok, but this is a—hey, whoa, are you all right?”

_I don’t know. Am I?_

“I’m fine,” Tommy said. “Just drunk.”

“I think you should go home,” Teddy said. He glanced up at the shattered lights. “Yeah. We’re taking you home. Come on.”

Tommy let the two of them pull him out of the club and back onto the street. The line to get in still wrapped around the block, and it was still full of girls.

That’s when Tommy realized.

“Hey, wait a minute!” he said. He shook Billy and Teddy off of him. “It was all dudes in there.”

“Duh,” Billy said. “It’s a gay bar. Like, the kind that’s actually for gay people and not for straight women’s bachelorette parties.”

“Oh.”

“Which is why I was surprised to see you here.” He raised his eyebrows, the shadow of a smirk on his face.

“Of course,” Teddy chimed in, “we totally support you and we’re here for you if you think you might be—”

“I’m not,” Tommy said.

“Right. That’s ok, too.”

“Anyway,” Billy said. He closed his eyes and put his hands together, and the circle of ground where they stood began to glow blue. “Let’s get you home. You’re still staying with David, right?”

_David._ Tommy couldn’t see him right now. He was too—confused?—no, he wasn’t confused, he was just drunk. He was just out of control. That’s all it was.

“No,” Tommy said. “Can’t go back there.”

“What happened?” Teddy asked. “I thought it was going pretty well.”

_It’s going too well, _Tommy thought, but what did that even mean? Living with David was fine, it was whatever, but it wasn’t— Tommy wanted another drink. He wanted Billy and Teddy gone. He wanted to get lost in a sea of strangers.

“Go have fun, ok?” Tommy said, trying to play it cool. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“Tommy, let us help you,” Billy said. “Please. Just this once.”

“We’ve had this conversation. I don’t need your help.” Ignoring the pounding in his head and the sloshing in his stomach, Tommy turned and ran, leaving Billy and Teddy and the whole stupid bar behind him in a split second.

He woke up the next morning in his own bed, in his own room—in David’s apartment—with a girl he had never seen before sleeping beside him. He couldn’t remember where she came from, but it didn’t matter. This meant everything was back to the way it should be. All the confusion of the night before was over.

Everything would be normal from here on out. Everything would be fine.

***

The first thing David did the next morning was tip-toe across the living room, crack Tommy’s bedroom door open the slightest bit, and peek inside. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Tommy lying there, mouth agape, chest rising and falling evenly. A twinge of bitterness tugged at him when he saw another person in the bed, but he ignored it. David was accustomed to ignoring his feelings lately.

Apparently, the many frantic texts from Billy asking if Tommy made it home last night had been a false alarm.

David pulled out his phone and texted Billy. _He’s here. He’s sleeping._

_Thank god_, Billy replied within seconds.

_What happened last night?_ David asked. He watched the three grey dots blink for a long time while Billy typed.

Finally, a message came through. _Me and Teddy ran into him at a club. He was so fucked up. He said he didn’t want to go back to your place. We thought maybe you two got in a fight. Worried he might do something stupid._

David stared at the words. Tommy didn’t want to come back. Over the past few weeks, he had been going out more and more, and now he didn’t want to come back at all. Was David smothering him? Or was it just Tommy getting bored of being in one place for so long? Either way, it made David feel small and shitty. They were supposed to take care of each other. They were both doing a bad job.

_No worries,_ David typed to Billy. _Everything’s fine here._

David went into the kitchen and pulled the frying pan out of the dishwasher, just like he did every morning. Before he could make it to the stove, he froze in place. Making breakfast for Tommy and his string of girls was routine at this point. But the idea of serving Tommy and his latest one-night stand, knowing that Tommy didn’t want to be here, knowing that Tommy was getting sick of him, was too humiliating. David was playing some domestic game, and Tommy wasn’t going to play along much longer.

David dropped his frying pan on the counter and pulled out his phone again.

_You free for breakfast? The usual place?_ he texted America.

_Sure. Give me 20 mins_, she answered. Then: _And I’m bringing Kate._

David rolled his eyes, but he smiled. At least one of them had managed to get the “straight” friend they had feelings for.

_Try not to be too nauseating_, he typed as he made a line for the door. He hadn’t brushed his teeth or hair, and he was still in sweatpants, but he had to get out of the apartment. Now that he knew Tommy didn’t want to be there, David found he didn’t either.

_Kate says no promises ;)_, came America’s response. Immediately following it, _The ;) was Kate too, she literally watched over my shoulder and forced me to type that._

By the time David walked into their favorite diner, Kate and America already sat in the corner booth, talking over two cups of coffee. The second Kate saw him, she stopped mid-sentence to throw her arms around America’s neck and plant a sloppy kiss on her cheek.

David wrinkled his nose and shook his head as he plopped into the booth across from them.

“Disgusting,” he said.

“Homophobe,” Kate answered.

“Ugh, I wish.” It was a joke, of course, but he said it a little too earnestly. While David asked the waitress for more coffee, Kate and America raised their eyebrows at each other.

“So, uh…” America ventured. “You good?”

He hadn’t decided yet if he wanted to unload all his issues onto them or just have a good time with his friends for a moment’s distraction.

“Yep,” David said. “Never better.” For now, at least, he was leaning toward distraction.

Kate and America made eye contact again, and David felt like he was about to lose his mind. Why did all happy couples have to do the secret shared glance thing? And why was he always the one sitting on the other side of the table, alone, watching it happen?

“It’s just that, Billy was freaking out about Tommy last night,” Kate said. “And now you want to hang out with us out of nowhere. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”

“Maybe everything in the world isn’t about Tommy,” David snapped. He was only angry because lately, it seemed like everything in his world was, in fact, about Tommy.

“You know you can talk to us,” America said. “If something happened with Tommy—”

“Nothing happened with Tommy!” David said. He sighed, dropped his head into his hands. “Nothing ever happens with Tommy.”

With his head in hands, he couldn’t see Kate and America’s silent communication, but he could _feel_ the way their eyes met, the way their heads tilted as they considered what to do with him.

“You’re kind of a mess, huh?” America said finally. David looked up at her. That was…not what he had expected her to say. Leave it to America to tell the truth.

He glanced down at himself, at his ratty t-shirt and sweats. He laughed out loud.

“Yeah. I’m a mess,” he said.

“Aren’t we all,” Kate said. She lifted her arm to showcase the fresh stitches binding a long slice through her skin. “You know how I got this? Trying to open a can of Spaghetti-os at 3am.”

“Emphasis on trying,” America interjected. “She never got it open.”

David laughed again. He could picture it exactly—Kate bleeding all over the kitchen, America stumbling out of the bedroom, sleepy-eyed, thinking there was danger, and eventually realizing she just had a dumbass for a girlfriend, then mercilessly making fun of her as she stitched her up. It was probably a very sweet story actually. They probably kissed when it was all over. America probably said something like _I love you, idiot. _The thought of it reminded David of—

Suddenly he didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

“Hey, it’ll be ok,” Kate said softly. To David’s surprise, she reached across the table and grasped his hand. She smiled at him, and he tried to smile back.

“I don’t see how,” he said.

“You gotta put yourself out there,” America suggested. “Meet someone new. You’ll get over this…fixation.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Yeah,” Kate said. She shrugged. “But even if you never meet some perfect person from your dreams, you still have the raddest friends in the world, am I right? What more do you need?”

“I thought I told you never to use the word ‘rad’ again,” America said, side-eyeing Kate. Kate grinned and winked at her.

Watching them, David felt the familiar pinprick of jealousy, of course, but on top of that, louder than it could ever be, love for his friends filled him up, swelling in his chest.

“She’s right, though,” he said. “You are both extremely rad.”

“See!” Kate said. “It’s a good word! I told you!”

America rolled her eyes.

The rest of breakfast was just like this—good and simple and fun. They laughed at stories about Kate’s shenanigans and made fun of Billy and Teddy for being an 80-year-old married couple trapped in the bodies of 20-somethings. Kate and America regaled the best interdimensional date spots they had discovered. They talked about their latest superhero antics—which, admittedly, David didn’t have enough of these days, but he helped where he could. 

Over the course of the morning, David realized an essential truth to which he had been oblivious: he missed his normal friends. His friends who didn’t make his breath catch every time they looked at him for a moment too long. His friends who could laugh without making him ache. His friends whose entire personalities didn’t frustrate him almost to the point of violence. He had been spending so much time with Tommy lately, David had forgotten the comfort and freedom of being with people he cared about without having to hide from them.

He didn’t want the feeling to end. So when they finished eating their waffles and bacon and hashbrowns and left the diner, he stuck with Kate and America as they went about their day. And they let him. They went to the gym, where America lifted weights and Kate watched her from the laziest treadmill David had ever seen. They went grocery shopping. They saw a movie. The more time they spent together, the less David thought about Tommy and the lighter he felt. Maybe isolating himself in the bubble universe of the apartment where the whole world revolved around his interactions with Tommy wasn’t the healthiest choice. Maybe he didn’t have to be so lonely. And who knew, maybe America was right. Maybe getting over this whole stupid thing wouldn’t be as impossible as it seemed.

America was usually right, after all.

By the time David said goodbye to his friends and sauntered back to his apartment with warmth in his chest and a spring in his step, sunset had smeared the sky pink and orange.

He wasn’t even disappointed to find the apartment empty.

Ok. He was a little disappointed. But it was an improvement!

He settled into the couch, content and tired from a long day of feeling all right for once, and watched TV until his eyes drooped shut.

In the middle of the night, David may have felt someone cover him with a blanket, or he may have dreamt it.

_Yes_, his sleep-drunk brain told him. _You must have dreamt it._

***

The next morning, Tommy woke up with a weird feeling in his gut. It wasn’t a hangover (this time) because he hadn’t had much to drink the night before. It was something else. He couldn’t put his finger on it.

He turned over in bed and immediately found his face buried in a wild tangle of brown hair. The hair belonged to…Julie? Jamie? He couldn’t remember. He did remember that she was sweet, and she was funny, and she was hot. They had fun, and they would probably never see each other again after today.

Tommy glanced at his phone—no panicked texts and calls from Billy like there had been when he woke up yesterday—and saw that it was only 9 a.m. He was usually dead to the world until noon at least, and his tired eyes strained to stay open, but he could tell he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. So he pulled himself out of bed carefully, so as not to wake his new friend, and dragged his feet until he reached the living room.

David was still passed out on the couch, Tommy noticed, twisted in the blanket Tommy had draped over him last night. And there was the weird feeling again, pinching his insides.

Watching David’s chest rise and fall as he breathed, watching his face twitch in response to some dream, Tommy had an idea. He shuffled into the kitchen, limbs still half-asleep, and pulled David’s trusty frying pan out of the cabinet. He could figure out how to make eggs and bacon and toast, right? How hard could it be?

Pretty hard, actually, he realized 20 minutes later when trails of smoke billowed from the stove and the fire alarm blared to life. A tiny flame flickered in the toaster. Several strips of bacon were irrevocably burnt into David’s pan. Globs of egg stuck to the floor and, Tommy was pretty sure, the ceiling, too.

“What the hell is going on?” David yelled sleepily from the couch.

“Did the smell of this delicious breakfast I’m cooking wake you up?” Tommy said, snuffing out the toaster fire as fast as only he could.

David sat up, stretching his long arms, and looked around the apartment.

“Holy shit, Tommy. If you want to move out, you can just tell me. You don’t have to burn down the whole building.”

David was obviously joking, but something about the way he said it bothered Tommy. He shook it off.

“Don’t blame me if your kitchen wasn’t ready for my experimental cutting-edge cooking skills.”

David stepped warily into the kitchen. A thick, golden drop of yolk dripped onto his nose and he looked up.

“How did you even—” Next his eyes fell on the disfigured, blackened toaster which, up until a few seconds ago, had been on fire. “The toaster?! Tommy. Do you really not know how to use a toaster?”

“Listen, I’m as shocked as you are,” Tommy said.

David shook his head and sighed. “You’re such an—wait.” His eyes narrowed as he realized something. He cocked his head to one side. “Why were you making breakfast anyway?”

A smile quirked the corner of David’s mouth, and suddenly Tommy felt hot and stuffy, as if the air he pulled into his lungs was full of water.

“I don’t know,” Tommy said. “I thought it might be fun.”

“Yeah. Uh-huh.” The smile spread on David’s face. “You sure you weren’t trying to do something nice for me?”

“I mean—” Tommy started, but Julie/Jamie/Whatever stumbled out of his bedroom before he could finish. He was relieved. He had no idea what he was about to say.

He was relieved, that is, until he watched David’s smile disappear.

“Should I be worried about the fire alarm?” the girl asked.

Tommy wished she had stayed in bed, or that he had never brought her here in the first place.

“No worries,” he said, playing the most confident, at-ease version of himself. “I’ve got it all under control.”

“Right.” She didn’t look convinced. “Well, I feel like shit, and to be honest, I don’t even remember your name, so I think I’m gonna go home.”

“That’s fair,” Tommy said, leading her to the door.

She stopped before she left, looked up at Tommy.

“I had a good time last night. Thanks for—” Her eyes fell on David, still standing in the kitchen. “Well. You know.” She bit her lip playfully.

Tommy laughed, but it was wrong. It kicked and scratched its way up his throat.

“My pleasure,” he said, and then he was shutting the door behind her.

“Who was that?” David asked, casually, conversationally. His face was blank.

Tommy shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” He wanted this moment to be over. Everything was supposed to be normal now, right? Except Tommy didn’t feel normal at all.

“At what point do we have a conversation about you bringing random strangers into my apartment?” There was fire in David’s voice, simmering just below the surface.

Tommy didn’t do well with fire. In fact, the air still smelled of smoke, and the alarm still beeped shrilly from overhead. Tommy needed to diffuse this whole situation…but diffusing wasn’t exactly his specialty.

“I think you mean _our _apartment,” Tommy said.

“Is it?” David’s hand clenched into a fist at his side. “Because that’s not what you told Billy.”

“What?” Tommy couldn’t keep up—Tommy, who could keep up with anything. Suddenly this felt like a serious conversation, but hadn’t they been talking about breakfast a minute ago? Where did Billy fit into this? What was David suggesting? Jesus Christ, there was egg on the ceiling! Why were they doing this _now_?

“Billy said you didn’t want to come back here,” David said. “The other night, when he ran into you at the bar. You were drunk, and he wanted to take you home, and you said not here.”

“Oh.” Tommy froze. He felt the blood rushing to his face. He didn’t want to think about that night ever again. “I didn’t—”

“Look, I get it,” David interrupted. Words were rushing out of him now, drowning Tommy in a relentless flood. “You like to have a good time, and I’m cramping your style. It makes sense. We’re not exactly a match made in heaven, right? If you don’t like living with me, it’s fine, I don’t care, but just tell me, because right now I feel like an idiot for thinking we were getting along great.”

Tommy sat in David’s words. The fire alarm finally went dead, and he immediately missed it. The silence was much worse.

“I like living here,” Tommy said eventually. He didn’t know what else to say. He thought it was obvious. He had a place to come back to for the first time in such a long time. He had a bed with sheets that smelled like him and his own coffee mug in the cupboard and he didn’t even have to give in to Billy and Teddy to get it. This apartment was almost—no, he realized, it _was_—his home. And it didn’t feel like home just because he slept here every night. It felt like home because—

Well. It didn’t matter why. The point was, for once in his life, he didn’t want to leave. And David thought that he did.

“I like you living here, too,” David said. “But I can’t—” His mouth kept moving, but the words didn’t come. Eventually, he gave up, staring into the empty space in front of him.

Suddenly, Tommy realized what David was really trying to say. An empty feeling sank deep into his gut. But he should’ve known this was coming. He was so used to this part. Everyone got sick of him eventually—even his own brother, although Billy would never admit it. For some reason, Tommy thought David was different.

“But you can’t deal with my shit anymore,” Tommy finished for him.

David closed his eyes. “Tommy, that’s not it.”

Tommy shrugged. “Of course it is. I know you’re too nice to tell me I’ve overstayed my welcome. It’s ok. I have places to be anyway.”

He turned for the door. He didn’t know how much longer he could play it cool. The flush in his cheeks burned so hot he thought his face might crack open, and he knew that if he tried to talk again, he would yell or cry or blow something up. David couldn’t see him like that.

“Stop!” David shouted. Tommy turned to face him again and found him with fists balled at his sides, eyes burning. “Stop acting like you don’t know what’s going on.”

“I know exactly what’s going on,” Tommy said, his voice rising in volume against his will. “We had our fun, and now you’re done with me. You’re just like my parents and the Young Avengers and everyone else. Well, whatever, David! I don’t care!”

“I’m not—you don’t—ugh!” David charged across the room at Tommy until they were mere inches apart. His chest rose and fell in heaves. Tommy had no choice but to look him full in the face. He had never seen David so _angry_ before. “Let’s cut the bullshit for one second, Tommy. How do you feel about me? I can’t do this anymore without knowing the answer to that.”

“I—”

_How do I feel about him? _Tommy thought. It was a question he had been running from for years now. There was no answer—at least, not one he could give.

_How do I feel about David Alleyne?_

“I have to go,” Tommy said.

He took off out the door at a sprint. In a second, he had burst from the building and rocketed down the street. He kept going. He thought if he ran long enough, the roar of the wind in his ears and the steady pounding of his feet against the pavement could drown out everything else.

He was wrong. Finally, after all this time, he realized this was the one thing he couldn’t outrun.

When Tommy finally stopped, the sun was halfway through setting, his legs wobbled beneath him, and his breaths came in heaves. He wasn’t worn out from the running, of course. He was Tommy, and he never got tired of running. He was just—he was—well, he was going through something, and he had no idea how to process it.

It all came back to David. David, who was always there for him. David, who was the best friend Tommy ever had. David, who probably hated him now. David, who Tommy thought maybe… Tommy shut himself down before he could finish the thought. It was crazy! A crazy thought from a confused brain that had been through too much emotional stress in the past 48 hours. 

What Tommy needed now, he decided, was a drink. And a girl. In his experience, there was nothing a drink and a girl couldn’t fix, at least for a little while. Maybe if he did the same thing he always did, he would finally go back to normal. And then David would go back to normal, too, and everything else would follow.

Except that when Tommy started running again, his feet carried him back to the bar where he ran into Billy and Teddy the other night.

He didn’t know he was going to go inside until it was done. The music pounded and the colored lights flashed, just as they had before. This time, Tommy was hyperaware of every move he made. Self-consciousness was a new feeling for him. He felt every cell in his body standing on edge, just waiting for something to happen. He couldn’t decide if he liked it or hated it.

He elbowed through a cluster of people—of guys—to take a spot at the bar. He ordered a drink. Chugged it. Ordered another.

Now he was starting to relax. Starting to feel like himself. Starting to get used to the adrenaline coursing through his veins, to the sense of possibility etched into every inch of his skin. He leaned back against the bar and let his eyes scan the room—idly, as if he didn’t know he was doing it.

(He knew. Ooooooooooh, he knew.)

And then his gaze caught on curly dark hair, a familiar face, an easy smile.

“Hey, you’re back!” It was the same boy from the other night. The one who talked to Tommy and made him blow the lights up. “I was hoping I’d run into you again.”

“Oh, really?” Tommy leaned a little closer to him. _What am I doing?_ he thought. _Why am I here?_ And then: _Oh, well._

“Let me buy you a drink,” the boy said. And Tommy did.

The longer Tommy watched him, the more little things he noticed. Like, for example, the boy’s smile. It was nice. His teeth were a little uneven, and his mouth quirked the tiniest bit to the left. It was maybe even kind of cute. And his curls, the way they fell across his forehead. That was nice, too. And his brown eyes—Tommy didn’t mean to look right at them, but they were bright and curious and they sucked him in. They reminded him of something, of someone else. Tommy definitely liked the eyes.

The thought crept slowly through the back door of Tommy’s brain. It twisted itself into different shapes—smile, hair, eyes—because it knew how this game worked. Any time Tommy faced the thought head-on, he banished it immediately. Obliterated it and locked up the pieces. But something was different this time. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the boy, or maybe it was the fight with David. Whatever the reason, it finally happened. The thought planted a seed in Tommy’s brain that grew and grew and grew until the flower burst from its pod. The thought was this:

Tommy was attracted to this boy. He wanted to touch him and kiss him and—and—

And he wasn’t the first, Tommy realized. He wouldn’t be the last, either. Just like that, a thousand locks on a thousand doors sprung open in Tommy’s head. He liked guys. He always had. He liked girls, too, _definitely _liked girls, but that was ok, right? David. David was bi. Tommy could be, too. Why had it taken him this long to accept it—or, no, to see it at all?

Restless, burning energy hummed in Tommy’s nerves, and he needed to do something with it.

“Do you wanna get out of here?” Tommy asked, leaning into the boy at the bar even more. He had been saying something, but Tommy hadn’t been listening.

“Ha,” the boy said in a huff of surprise. “I mean. Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Tommy grabbed him by the hand and tugged him out of the bar. Outside, underneath the stretch of ink-blue sky, emptied of its stars by the glow of the city, Tommy thought, _Fuck it_. He reached out and touched the boy’s face. Jesus, he didn’t even know his name. But that had never stopped Tommy before.

Tommy pressed the boy against the bar’s brick wall and leaned in closer than ever.

“Can I kiss you now?” Tommy asked breathlessly.

The boy smiled. He nodded.

Their lips met, and it was…good. It was a good kiss. The boy did things with his tongue that Tommy enjoyed, and his hair felt good in Tommy’s hands, but it wasn’t exactly right. Tommy felt weird again. There was still one more door, one more lock that hadn’t opened, and he just couldn’t find it.

But this boy, this really cute boy, breathed into him and trailed kisses down his neck. And, no, it wasn’t perfect. Time didn’t stand still, the earth didn’t shake, the heavens didn’t open up above them, but it was still good.

Good enough for now.

***

David spent most of his day alone. Kate and America were busy doing something superhero-y on the west coast, and he didn’t even bother calling Billy and Teddy. He just didn’t think hanging out with someone who looked exactly like Tommy would be all that helpful at the moment.

So David slumped on the couch, or in bed, or—he wasn’t proud of this—on the floor, and he kicked himself for being so stupid. He should’ve kept his mouth shut. If he hadn’t gone and said _how do you feel about me? _none of this would be happening. Of course Tommy wouldn’t come back now. He was probably halfway across the country, crashing someone’s house party and making out with a hundred girls at once. He probably didn’t even remember their fight.

Which was for the best, David tried to remind himself. He wished Tommy had reacted differently, he _really _did, but still, what David had said was true. He couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t live with Tommy, couldn’t have his hopes raised and dashed a thousand times a day. It was killing him. If Tommy didn’t feel the same way about David that David felt about him, it was good that he was gone. And Tommy definitely didn’t feel the same way. David was more sure of that now than ever.

Like America said, it was time for David to get over his fixation. To accept that it was never going to happen with Tommy. Really, he had known that since the beginning.

Sometime after the sun had gone down and the whole apartment was wrapped in darkness, David was lying on the couch, half-asleep, when he heard someone fumbling with the doorknob. The sound sent a jolt through his whole body, and he shot up instinctively. He was confused and disoriented and had probably been in the middle of a nightmare. He froze when the door banged open.

But then a glimpse of messy white hair made him relax. Tommy. He actually came back. The smile was halfway formed on David’s mouth when he realized that Tommy wasn’t alone. For the second time in the past minute, David froze.

A boy—curly dark hair, taller than Tommy, probably very cute—stumbled in with him. Their arms were wrapped loosely around each other, their faces pressed close together. Tommy whispered something in that low, breathy way he always did when he was drunk.

A dull ache throbbed in David’s chest, and he could barely breathe around it. He couldn’t believe this, or couldn’t accept it, or didn’t want to. The tiny part of him that had held out hope thought that _if_ Tommy came back, _if_ they kept living together after today, it would be because Tommy understood. It would be because Tommy wanted—

But apparently, David was wrong.

Tommy and the boy were kissing now, Tommy’s hands shrugging the jacket off the boy’s shoulders. David had seen Tommy kiss plenty of girls before, but this time was different. David’s throat got tight. Tommy Shepherd was kissing a boy. Which meant that he wasn’t so straight after all, and he knew it, and it didn’t matter because he still didn’t want David.

He couldn’t help feeling like Tommy was rubbing it in his face on purpose, making a point. _I don’t like you like that, so back off, _he was saying. David couldn’t watch anymore without getting sick.

“Um,” David choked out. “Hi.”

Tommy and the boy stopped dead in their tracks. Tommy’s gaze snapped to David’s face and then away again before David could look him in the eye.

“Hey, bro. Sorry,” Tommy said. But he didn’t sound sorry. His hair fell into his eyes, his cheeks flushed bright red, and in that moment, David felt an overwhelming urge to hit him. He grasped for something, anything to say that might bite through Tommy’s drunkenness and arrogance enough to hurt him.

When he opened his mouth, what he actually said was:

“I was worried about you.”

Of course it was true. Tommy could run away and ignore him and break his heart a thousand times, but David would never stop caring about what happened to him. So, yes, he was worried, and it was the most frustrating thing, and he wished more than anything that he hadn’t admitted it out loud.

Tommy’s eyes flashed to David’s face again for a split second, then back to the floor.

“What’s going on?” the boy asked. “You said you lived alone.”

A twist of the knife in David’s gut. Tommy wasn’t _coming back_, was he? This had never been about David at all. Tommy just needed somewhere to go. He had always just needed somewhere to go. David saw this clearly for the first time, and he felt more than ever like a damn fool. Fine. If Tommy wanted the apartment, he could have it. 

“He does,” David said. He charged toward the door, shoving past Tommy without looking at him. “I was just visiting. But clearly you’re busy tonight.”

“David, wait—”

David felt the brush of Tommy’s fingers on his arm, trying to stop him, but it was too late. He slammed the door behind him before he had time to imagine what Tommy might have said.

_It’s over_, David repeated to himself again and again as he sulked in the corner of a tiny coffee shop. _It has to be over_.

He was so sick of being angry and sad and lonely all the time. It was exhausting. For a while, he thought the few quiet, blissful moments with Tommy could be worth it, but he wasn’t sure anymore. So David was going to move on with his life. He was actually going to do it this time. No more waiting around for something that was never going to happen.

Never mind that this was Tommy’s favorite coffee shop. Never mind that David’s brain was currently running through memories of the hundred times they had come here together.

“Is anyone sitting here?” a voice asked, snapping David out of his miserable reverie. A guy with dark skin and dreads tied into a knot on top of his head gestured to the empty seat across the table from David.

“Oh. Um, no, I guess not,” David said.

The guy narrowed his eyes as he smiled playfully. “You guess?”

“No,” David said firmly. “No one is sitting there.”

As the guy sat down and unfolded a laptop, David self-consciously straightened his shoulders out of their slump. The stranger had kind eyes and a cute smile and David literally couldn’t help noticing how strong his arms looked. David glanced around the coffee shop. It was crowded, yes, but there were definitely other empty seats. In fact, there were two whole tables sitting unoccupied. And yet this guy, who kept stealing glances at David over the top of his computer, had chosen to sit here.

_Meet someone new_, America had said. She was always, always right.

“I’m David,” he blurted, because he didn’t know what else to say. It had been a long time since he had tried flirting.

“Hi, David,” the guy sitting across from him said, smiling again. “I’m Javier.”

“Nice to meet you,” David said. They sat in a shifting, expectant silence for too many seconds. _Jesus, I’m bad at this_, David thought. “So…what are you working on?”

“It’s nothing,” Javier said. He rolled his eyes. “Just a stupid paper for my psych class. Nothing interesting.”

“More interesting than my reason for being here,” David said, and instantly regretted it. He didn’t want to talk about _that_.

Javier scrutinized him over the table. “Let me guess. Somebody broke your poor little heart and you needed somewhere to pout about it.”

David laughed in surprise. “Psych class, huh?”

“What can I say, I’m a great student. I’m also guessing that you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Correct again,” David said. “You get an A.”

It took all his self control not to physically cringe at himself. No wonder no one had kissed him in two years. 

But Javier didn’t cringe. He just smiled and leaned into the conversation. Javier talked about studying at NYU, and David talked about his time at a “specialized private school” that he didn’t want to get into right now. _Yeah, I was with the X-men for a long time and I used to be a mutant, but then I got de-powered so now I’m just a regular human with all the knowledge of a hundred of the world’s best superheroes. _It wasn’t exactly the best opener.

Before David knew what was happening, they were leaving the café and walking through the park, and then they were grabbing dinner. David was shocked at how _easy_ the whole thing was. There was no baggage, no history, no emotional landmine to tiptoe around. It was like when he spent the day with America and Kate—a little different, this time, of course, but still good and simple and fun. He was beginning to understand that Tommy was the only one who made these things so difficult.

_It’s a good thing I’m done with him, then_, David thought. And, somehow, it was the last time he thought about Tommy for a long time.

“So…what now?” Javier asked after dinner, looking up at David with bright eyes.

David’s nerves froze him. What was he supposed to do now? Should he explain that he had only ever kissed two guys, both under extremely weird and complicated circumstances, and never gone further than that? Should he say he wanted to take it slow?

Except that he didn’t. David was so sick of taking it slow.

“We could go back to my place,” David said. “I mean, if you want.”

Javier smiled. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

David led him home to an empty apartment. He felt a twinge of something in his gut when he saw the blanket still draped across the couch, but he forgot all about it when Javier kissed him. They stumbled into David’s bedroom and fell in a heap on the bed.

Of course it was a good night. Of course David enjoyed himself. But…and of course there had to be a _but_, to David’s endless frustration…something was missing. Afterwards, when Javier slept beside him, head nuzzled in David’s chest, an arm wrapped around his waist, David lay awake, staring at the ceiling and feeling empty.

It wasn’t as easy as he thought, or as America had made it out to be. This whole “moving on” thing.

Javier shifted under the covers.

_I’m off to a good start, though_, David thought with a smile. He buried his face in Javier’s hair and fell asleep with more than a little hope for the future.

***

Tommy’s head was a mess.

And, ok, sure, it was always a mess, but this time was different. He didn’t have any words for what was going on inside of him. Usually, when his feelings got this complicated, he ignored them (with the help of alcohol) until they went away. Now, though, they wouldn’t go away and they wouldn’t let him ignore them. Everything was just so _loud_, like a crowd of thousands babbling in a bunch of different languages at once.

Soon after David left, Tommy sent the boy—the poor, confused boy from the bar whose name Tommy never learned—away. They tried to get the night back on track and fooled around for a few minutes, but Tommy’s heart wasn’t in it anymore. At the moment, Tommy’s heart was…well, it was just a mess. There was no other word for it.

So, the boy left the apartment with an indifferent shrug and the same easy smile as always. Tommy would’ve liked him, he thought, if circumstances were different.

What exactly _were_ the circumstances, though? Tommy had just realized a huge truth about himself. He was bi. Probably. Ugh, this was all so confusing. And if he really was bi, if that really was the secret he’d been keeping from himself all this time, why didn’t he feel relieved? Shouldn’t he be celebrating, basking in the light of his new freedom? Instead, he just felt frustrated and lonely and small.

God, was Tommy sick of feeling frustrated and lonely and small.

Too bad the person he wanted to talk to the most, the person who was the best at listening to him and making him feel better, had just run out the door. If Tommy really fucked this up bad enough to lose his best friend, he didn’t know what he would do.

And then, of course, just like every time Tommy accidentally dwelled on how much David meant to him, some unnamed emotion swelled inside him to the point that he couldn’t contain it and—

He did what he did best and took off running. There would be no more emotional explosions from Tommy Shepherd any time soon. There had been far too many of them lately. He would run and blow off steam and clear his head as the wind roared in his ears, and he would come back to the steaming shit pile of his thoughts later. If he could just do something simple, like put one foot in front of the other over and over and over again, maybe the answers he needed would become easier to find. Maybe he would figure out what was wrong and what he had to do to fix it. Maybe he would figure out what he wanted.

He ran and ran and ran. He didn’t stop to eat or rest or even to get a drink. This time, he wasn’t going anywhere, not even subconsciously. He just needed to_ go_. He circled Manhattan one, two, three times. He challenged himself to find new routes, carved new paths through buildings he had never seen before. He ran through dim alleyways and under abandoned overpasses. He scared off a couple of muggers, made sure a couple of kids got home safe.

And that actually did take his mind off his own problems for a while. Helping people always made him feel a little bit better about the world. Tommy was a hero at heart, even if he didn’t always feel it. Even if no one else ever saw it.

When the sky started to lighten and the sun peaked out from behind the tall buildings that surrounded him, Tommy decided it was time to go back. No more running. He would return to the apartment, and David would be there or he wouldn’t. Tommy didn’t even know which he would prefer.

(Well, he would prefer that David be there, of course, but how embarrassing would it be to admit that and then find the apartment empty?)

He zoomed back to David’s place and crept quietly through the front door. It was still early, and if David was here, Tommy didn’t want to wake him. The living room was still and quiet in the grey light sifting in through the windows. Tommy tip-toed over to David’s bedroom and nudged the door open, just a little crack. He braced himself before peeking in.

And then he froze.

In no way had Tommy prepared for what he now saw. David was here, he was home, and that was undeniably a good thing. Tommy tried to focus on that. He tried to see past the man curled up in David’s arms. He tried to think past the fact that he had assumed nothing like this would ever happen.

But why? David was good-looking and smart and he had the best heart—he was bound to meet someone eventually. Tommy knew that, he guessed, on an intellectual level, but still, he had never seen David so much as flirt with someone else.

With anyone, he meant. Tommy had never seen David flirt with anyone, period.

The sight of David and this stranger together, the images that flashed into Tommy’s mind of what must have happened here last night, made his stomach turn. He was angry and then he was sad and then he wanted to punch a hole in the wall and then he wanted to lie in his bedroom with the lights off and do nothing for a week. Too much was churning through his head. The rabble was louder than ever.

But again, _why_? None of this made any sense! None of it—

Tommy broke his promise about emotional outbursts when a lamp beside the couch exploded with a _bang_ into a million tiny pieces that went flying all over the room. He still stood by David’s cracked door and watched as both David and the stranger jolted awake. Even moving as fast as he could, Tommy barely stepped back fast enough so that neither of them saw him there.

_Great_, Tommy thought. _Perfect. Now I have to explain myself to David and some fucking—_

“Tommy?” David’s voice came from the bedroom. “Is that you?”

Tommy said nothing. What was he supposed to say anyway?

David stepped out of the bedroom in boxers and a t-shirt. Tommy averted his eyes.

“Man, did you blow up my lamp?” David said.

“I think so,” Tommy said. “My bad.”

“What’s going on?” David squinted at the slowly brightening window. “What are you doing up so early?”

“You know me, always on that grind.” Tommy made his best attempt at a smirk, but even he could tell it was a failure. Hopefully David was too sleepy to notice.

“Everything ok?” David’s…_friend_ said as he stepped out of the bedroom. His mouth cracked in a wide yawn. Tommy’s pulse kicked up a notch when he noticed the guy was wearing jeans and carried a jacket over his arm. David seemed to notice, too, and his brow creased.

“You leaving already?” David asked.

“Yeah, sorry, babe,” he said. Tommy flinched. “I have to work. But listen, I had a really good time last night.”

He leaned in to plant a kiss on David’s cheek.

Tommy didn’t know what to do. Leave? Crack a joke? He definitely knew he shouldn’t stand there watching them like a creep, and he definitely didn’t _want_ to watch, but he couldn’t stop.

“I’ll see you later?” David said.

“I hope so,” the stranger said with a wink, and he left.

David just stood there for a moment, biting his lip. He stared dreamily after the man he had spent the night with.

Eventually, Tommy couldn’t stand the look on his face anymore.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to bring random strangers back to the apartment,” Tommy said with a bitter edge in his voice.

David blinked and looked at him. “What?”

“I’m just saying, you made such a big deal about me bringing people home.”

“That wasn’t about—”

“I know what it was about,” Tommy said quickly. “We already had this fight.”

“Oh, are we fighting?” There was heat in David’s voice now.

_No_, Tommy wanted to say, _never_, but if they weren’t fighting, what were they doing? If he wasn’t annoyed or angry at David, what was this burning sensation crawling through him?

“I don’t know. I’m just confused why you’re allowed to use the apartment for one-night stands and I’m not, that’s all. Do you even know that guy’s name?” Tommy barely knew what he was saying, but the words flowed like lava.

“Are you serious? This, coming from you? You of all people have no right to be mad at me for spending the night with someone I just met.”

“I’m not mad that you spent the night with someone you just met,” Tommy said. It was impossible to find the right words for feelings he didn’t even recognize. “I’m not mad, period. I just—I’m just—”

“What, Tommy?” David was practically shouting now. “Why do you even care what I do?”

“Because,” Tommy said lamely. What he needed to say was on the tip of his tongue, at the top of his lungs—it was right there in front of him, and he realized now that it had been for a long time, but he just couldn’t—it was too— “I care because—because—ugh!”

Behind David, a couch cushion erupted into a spout of stuffing. Tommy was losing control. David didn’t notice, or he didn’t care.

“Wow. You don’t even know,” David said.

Something came loose in Tommy’s chest, the one tiny screw that was left to hold him together. Everything came pouring out at once, filled his lungs like water drowning him. He saw himself, and he saw David, and he saw clearly for the first time.

Tears of frustration and release and just about everything else he had ever felt in his life brimmed in Tommy’s eyes as he looked at David. Instinct took over, begging him to hide this part of himself like he always did, but what was the point? If he couldn’t do _this_, what was the point of doing anything at all?

“I do know,” Tommy said. “I know that I’m bad at feelings and I screw everything up and I push people away when I care about them because I’m a coward and I know that you’re still here anyway and I don’t know why but I know you never give up on me and I know I can’t lose you because you’re the most important thing in the world to me.”

David blinked. He said nothing. Several seconds passed in silence, and Tommy started to panic.

“Was I talking too fast?” Tommy asked.

“No,” David said quietly. “I heard you. I just, um—”

“I love you,” Tommy blurted. All the running and fighting and hiding boiled down to this one simple fact. “Sorry it took me so long to say it.”

More silent seconds passed between them, and David wouldn’t meet Tommy’s eyes.

_Oh my god_, Tommy thought. _I’m too late. I blew it. _

Suddenly, David’s hands gripped Tommy’s arms so hard he thought they might bruise.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Tommy?” David said. The look in his eyes was overwhelming—intense, confused, maybe even a little angry…and then there was something else, something less easy to name. “You’re telling me this whole time—? I’ve been going through hell for years, and you just— I mean, obviously I love you, Tommy, why the fuck else would I— Jesus Christ.”

“I know!” Tommy said, pinned by David’s grip. “I’m really sorry, but—wait. Wait.”

He looked at David, and David looked at him, and slowly—together—they realized what had just happened. What had really, actually just happened. The shock in David’s eyes—no, it wasn’t shock, was it? Shock was usually bad, and no part of this was bad. The _awe_ in David’s eyes mirrored everything Tommy felt. In that moment, he felt like he was in a dream, but he also felt more awake, more alive, more _real _than he ever had before.

David still held him tightly by the arms. There was only one thing to do. And they had done it before.

Tommy leaned in first. It was important that he went first, he knew.

His lips touched David’s softly. Then David plunged forward. Despite appearances, David had always been the braver one. He moved his hands from Tommy’s arms only to hold his face, to stroke the outline of his jaw. Tommy melted under him. He had never been touched quite like this before.

The kiss was so different from the one with the boy from the bar that it almost shocked Tommy (or it would have, if he had had enough functioning brain cells to think about anything other than David’s hands and lips and tongue). There was still the rush of adrenaline, yes, and the explosion of nerves. But this time, Tommy found what he had been missing before. This time, he felt safe. He felt like he could never belong anywhere more than right where he was.

When they pulled apart, David kept his hands cupping Tommy’s face. They stared into each other’s eyes, and Tommy thought he would burst. Another couch cushion exploded, showering them in white fluff.

“Bro,” Tommy said breathlessly.

David groaned and let his hands fall. “You really know how to ruin a moment.”

“I don’t know…” Tommy said, smiling. “I feel like you love it.”

“Shut up,” David mumbled. He shook his head, with the purest smile Tommy had seen on his face in a long time.

“Oh god.” Tommy’s face fell.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just realized we’re gonna have to tell Billy about this.” The thought of his brother’s little all-knowing smile and the sincerely sweet congratulations he would shower on them made Tommy want to die.

David laughed. “If that’s the worst of our problems, I think we’ll be just fine.”

Tommy smiled, overcome with warmth in a way that, if anyone else had told him about it, he would have made fun of them for hours. He reached out and grabbed David’s hand. It was warm and perfect.

“I think so, too,” Tommy said.

David—_David Alleyne, my favorite person in the whole world, holy shit_—squeezed Tommy’s hand, and for the first time in his life, Tommy felt like he really would be just fine. Better than fine, even.

_Happy_, he thought, but it was more than that. So much more. The right word struck him like a bolt of lightning.

_Home_.

***

The six of them—Billy and Teddy, America and Kate, David and Tommy—sat around a table in their favorite breakfast diner.

“I still can’t believe you guys actually got together,” Billy said, gesturing with a forkful of pancake. “I mean, I’m not stupid, I knew you were in love with each other, but I didn’t think you would ever admit it.”

“Especially after watching David mope about it for two years,” America added.

“Whatever,” Tommy said. “You’re all just jealous because now you’ll never get to be the hottest couple on the team.”

The second he finished talking, a wet wad of napkin flew through the air from Kate’s direction and hit him in the eye.

“Pff. Beg to differ,” she said.

Billy looked at David. “I’m just glad you’ll be making out with my brother from now on instead of my—”

“No!” David and Teddy yelled out in unison.

“You promised, remember?” Teddy said. “You’re not supposed to bring that up anymore.”

“Oh, yeah.” Billy looked slightly annoyed that he didn’t get to finish his joke, but he shook it off. “Fine. I’ll just say I’m happy you’re making out with my brother and leave it at that.”

“Now for the love of god,” Tommy said, “can you all please shut up and let me enjoy my breakfast meats?”

They did not, of course, shut up, but David didn’t mind, and Tommy didn’t really seem to, either.

They said more stupid shit about each other, and more things were thrown across the table before it was all said and done, and David was impossibly, humiliatingly happy. It was all he had ever wanted and more. He had his friends, and he had Tommy Shepherd holding his hand, right there on the table for everyone to see. It was all, every bit of it, good and simple and fun.

“So I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t move in with us after all,” Teddy said to Tommy at one point.

Tommy gave some snarky response—David didn’t know exactly what he said, he wasn’t really listening. The conversation moved on, but—

Tommy’s eyes caught his, a smile playing on his lips. The rest of the world faded away. There was nothing outside of the two of them, nothing outside of this moment, and they didn’t need words to understand exactly what they wanted to say to each other.

The moment passed, as moments do, but it was ok. David knew there would be more of them, a million more, a lifetime’s worth of them.

For now, his friends were laughing at him, and the idiot boy he loved more than anything in the world was smiling, and it was far, far more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! for more meltdowns over the young avengers and other gays, find me on twitter @poetroclus <3


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